APOSTOLATE/ACTIVITIES

 Initially, the congregation of the LSMIG was founded to promote the education of girls. However, it has now widened its area of apostolate in response to the spiritual and social needs to include health services, social work and various kinds of parish ministries. The most demanding needs at the moment includes working with refugees and the traumatized people, children with disabilities, the poor and the sick. The current apostolate therefore includes:

Ø     Christian and general education in schools.

Ø     Catechetical and liturgical work in parishes

Ø     Medical services in hospitals, dispensaries and medical units.

Ø     Child welfare and working with children with disabilities.

Ø     Social services with the community of northern that is traumatized by war.

EDUCATION:

 This Order was started to promote the standard of formal education for girls in Uganda, this was because African women were denied opportunity of going to school. With time the service of the Sisters was extended to both mixed and boys’ schools. Right now thousands of children are under the care of the Sisters in four countries; Uganda, Kenya, Sudan and Italy.

Ikwera Negri School for children with disability

HEALTH DEPARTMENT

The congregation of the Little Sisters of Mary Immaculate has 69 sisters in the medical field. Out of these, there ate two doctors,  two pharmacists, three clinical officers, two principal tutors and 60 nurses.

These sisters work in hospitals and dispensaries both within and outside Uganda.

These sisters work dedicatedly presenting the healing Christ to the patients. Their services are different from that of the lay medical personnel because they take the work of evangelization and giving Christ to the patients as their major apostolate.

On many occasion, they bring hope to the patients by proclaiming Christ through the ministry they render to them. They render counseling, care and support to the sick. Besides medical attention, they also provide for many needy patients material assistance and care in terms of foodstuff, soap, sugar and other essential needs for the desperate patients.

PASTORAL

The LSMIG was founded to teach and evangelize. Today the LSMIG are found teaching in schools of all levels and actively evangelizing, instructing adults, catechumens in parishes, schools and villages.

Taking Catechesis as more systematic way of carrying out the work of evangelization, education of those who are disposed to receive baptism or the ratification of Christian duties, initiation to the life of the church and to concrete witness of charity, the sisters carry out their mission in an organized and systematic way, with the view of initiating the hearers into the fullness of Christian life hence leading them to the maturity of the faith.

In the formation too, we strive to form the catechists (agents) holistically as Pope John Paul II stressed in his encyclical Populorum Progressio. We form them spiritually, academically and economically so that they become the principal agents of their own authentic development. We train catechists (agents) for the renewal of Christian life in homes, schools and in the whole world and especially in this war torn Africa and especially Uganda in particular so that together we may learn to value human life and respect is as the creator intended at creation.

The mission to teach and evangelize addresses a number of needs:

1.                    To make the people know the Christian doctrine, principal truth and principal obligation for being a Christian.

2.                    To form practicing Christians

3.                    To educate people to faith and guide to maturity of Christian life

The Role of Little Sisters of Mary Immaculate in Social Works

The Little Sisters of Mary Immaculate as a Congregation from its foundation was a teaching congregation. Basically all sisters were to be teachers for the purpose of promoting the girl-child education.

Education in the Northern part of the country was particularly for boys and the girl child was to be groomed for marriage. The greatest pride of the parents was to see their daughters getting married rather than go to school.

When the founder of the congregation, Bishop Angelo Negri thought of founding a congregation of sisters, he straight away identified teaching as a big role that the sisters could take upon them in order to break the bad culture of leaving girl children illiterate while their counter parts, the boy children go to school. For this reason, the majority of the sisters of the congregation are teachers at various levels of education: primary schools, catechumenate, secondary schools, teacher training institutions, nurses training institutions. These teaching services are rendered not only to the girl child as was the mind of the founder but generally to both boys and girls.

With the changing needs of the time, the sisters are not only teachers now but also perform social services with the communities. These include medical practice in hospitals and health centres, guidance and counselling, secretariat work, media and others.

The author of this article being a counsellor will focus on the counselling aspect of the social services. Counselling is a helping relationship between the counsellor and the client. Its main aim is to improve the life of the client from an undesirable life situation to a desirable future scenario that presents a better and happier life situation.

Counselling is a very important need of our time when almost everybody living in Northern Uganda is traumatized.

The Lord’s Resistance Army war that started under the leadership of Joseph Kony since 1986 has several negative impacts that left 90% of the populace in Northern Uganda living in Internally Displaced People’s Camps. The suffering in camps include lack of food except the little provided by World Food Programme, attacks and abductions even in camps whose creation was basically to protect people from rebel attacks and tortures. Night commuters centres have been created mainly in town and mission areas to protect people particularly children from rebel abduction.

 1000 children from twelve Night commuters Centres in Gulu gather at St. Monica  for  Easter Celebrations on Easter Monday 28^th March 2005.

 Many children have been abducted, tortured, killed and some of the survivors are still in LRA captivity with no hope to return home. In their captivity they are forced to kill, amputate peoples’ limbs, rape women, loot property, ambush vehicles on roads and other atrocious activities towards their own relatives, people whose language they clearly hear and communities which they know very well..

All these acts are so traumatizing that when the children return home they show unusual signs that are not acceptable in the society such as aggression, screaming in their dreams, hallucination, flashback, loneliness, unnecessary crying and similar other actions which call for psychological attention and support.

The Counselling Centre has come into existence in order to attend to such needs of the formerly abducted children and other needs of the people who are equally traumatized not because they were abducted but because they have lived in this war situation for the last 19 years.

Counselling, which is a psychological support aims at giving hope to people who have become hopeless due to the war which seems to have no end. Hunger is part of the suffering since families are deprived of their own lands where they used to dig and now live in camps. The sisters give hope to the children by providing them with what to eat and quench their thirst.

            Children eating and drinking through the kind provision of sisters

Other therapeutic activities to promote psychological well being include individual counselling, group counselling, and family therapy to heal the environment where the individual clients come from. Film shows on various educational themes are also part of the therapeutic activities where the society of the traumatized people gain some knowledge, skills and values through the various well selected films.

Culture too has a big role in promoting psychological well being where children and the community strongly believe in cleansing ceremonies and other traditional rituals. Games, sports, music, dance and drama all have great roles towards psychological healing and is a great role the sisters are playing in the field of social work

Children for cultural dance as part of psychological therapy.

Many training for various groups of people are part of the social work that the sisters do. These groups include parents on the topic of parenting and family living. Young boys and girls have training on Sex Education, Adolescence and growing up, child soldiers, child mothers, alcoholics and drug addicts have their own training in line with their problems. The activities of the Little Sisters of Mary Immaculate are many in the areas of social works. Whatever have been enumerated are just examples of them.

PEACE BUILDING WORK BY LITTLE SISTERS OF MARY IMMACULATE OF GULU.

The 21 year war in Northern Uganda has led to the displacement of over –1.5 million people, living in the internally displaced camps, many of whom have died, been abducted and maimed by the rebel group called Lord’s Resistant Army led by a reclusive mystic. This has brought a lot of conflict among the people in Northern Uganda as the war that traditionally started from Acholi land overlapped into the neighboring districts. The sisters in their different fields of apostolate are contributing towards building a peaceful environment for the people of Uganda and Northern Uganda in particular. Working with a humanitarian Organization called Catholic Relief Services founded in 1943 by the Catholic bishops of United State of America to alleviate human suffering, development of people and to foster charity and Justice in the world, the sisters are carrying out the following peace building activities through partner organizations like: Justice and Peace Commission, Acholi Religious Leaders Peace Initiative, The Traditional Chiefs and Caritas Gulu.

·        Support to women peace committee in their roles in community reconciliation and peace    process especially in the camps.

·        Training of Community Paralegals (Volunteers) covering three districts in Northern Uganda on Human rights, counseling, land issues, conflict resolution and management. The paralegals carry out community and households education on human rights- more than 8000 people in Northern Uganda have been educated on human rights issues in 2004 and some are using the non-violent means of conflict resolution. The trained paralegals also solve land conflict in the community and counsel the traumatized people.

·        Started and supported peace clubs in schools so that students are able to carry out community sensitization especially among fellow students on conflict resolution/management and this has been possible in 29 secondary schools in northern Uganda. The peace club students also conduct charity work in internally displaced camps and are involved in agricultural activities to help the vulnerable students and community members.

·        A number of interventions are designed to foster inter-family, inter-group, inter-cultural re-union and to strengthen non-violent conflict resolutions mechanisms and to help heal the wounds inflicted by the rebel group in Northern e.g. a number of dialogues led by traditional and religious leaders between the rebel group and the government of Uganda, inter-community dialogues and among the different ethnic groups in conflict like between Jie and Acholi, Lango and Acholi tribes have been supported.

·        Support to traditional society in Northern Uganda, which has indigenous mechanisms for reconciling parties in conflict through conducting the traditional ceremonies to over 2000 formerly abducted children and adult returnees with the community and reintegrating them into the community.

·        Through the partners we have developed grass root structures for peace-by building the capacity of the peace committees in the community and in the camps where the displaced people are staying. The peace committees are mediators and negotiators between conflicting parties in their different community and their efforts has started creating peaceful coexistence among the people.

·        To be in solidarity and to foster peace in the community, we are conducting peace rallies in Sub-counties especially in communities where people were killed and buried in mass graves.

·        Peace radio talk shows are conducted on conflict resolutions, the importance of reconciliation and accepting the formerly abducted children and the returnees are involved in the talk shows and during the radio program they urge the rebels who are still in the bush to come out and join the community. They also give testimonies on how they were welcomed, forgiven by the community and reintegrated into the community. This has made many rebels to come out and join the community in the last three years.

·        Support Exchange visits conducted by religious and traditional leaders to other cultural institutions and districts to share experiences on conflict resolutions and fostering peace in the community and among / between the conflicting parties.

MASS COMMUNICATION

With the technological advancement, the congregation has found it relevant to diversify means of evangelization. We have trained journalists who at the moment specialized in radio programs with Radio-Wa and Radio Maria. Radio-Wa covers mainly Northern & Eastern Uganda, while Radio Maria extends from Gulu to all parts of Uganda and Southern Sudan. Such communication has no limit and does not discriminate; the Good News is for Christians and non-Christians, including Moslems and pagans.

Radio communication has become one of the best tools of evangelization, where the sisters reach out easily to the public, preaching and giving out God’s message to everybody. Through the Radio, the sisters and the trained other staff prepare preaching and lessons on various topics to cater for people of all caliber. Different groups of Christians lead, Louds &Vespers, Rosary, petition prayers. It is amazing to see the sisters preparing young children beginning from Kindergarten age, to lead and pray Rosary and share out their petition prayers. The Radio program is playing a wonderful role in evangelizing many people. Many Catholics are now self-motivated to participate in the program. Many Youth groups like Y.C.S. (Young Christian Students) and Peace Clubs are making great contribution towards evagelization.

Radio Maria connects people to the celebration of the Mass at least twice a day, and is very important for most of our people who cannot participate in daily Mass due the problem of insecurity and other reasons. The next program will be Mobile Radio, which will enable the sisters to reach out to people both near and far. There will be no need for people to travel long distance coming to the Radio station, instead the staff can use mobile program to supplement the use of telephone call that is now in service.

Radio Maria & Radio-Wa have therefore assisted the sisters of Mary Immaculate in carrying out their apostolate, including group counseling, as done by CARITAS counseling Center every Saturday afternoon.