Our newsletters and visit reports

In addition to the latest quarterly letter, you will also find on this page the archives of past letters, downloadable in pdf format (Acrobat), the latest visit reports from our director and the external evaluation reports. 

LETTER TO FRIENDS OF SISTER EMMANUELLE

« Believe in others: the same breath of justice stirs them. Do not be afraid to join their fight: the unity of young people is a formidable force. Believe in yourself, as I believe in you, believe in others as you believe in yourself! » (Sister Emmanuelle)

Dear Friends,

Left to right : Camilla François, Véronique de Haan, Soraya Chmouliovsky, Lucienne Bittar, Fabienne Lebedinsky, Betram Gordon Kuol, Florence Rivollet, Dominique Mougeotte, Jean Claude François, Gisèle Rochat, Lionel Teminian, Patrick Bittar (crouching)… and SamOn May 27th, we held our 47th Annual General Meeting at the Cénacle in Geneva, with the participation of the local program managers for the projects we support in South Sudan and Haiti: Betram Gordon Kuol and Jean Claude François (see photo).

This meeting allowed us to review our activities for 2025 and, through the accounts of Betram and Jean Claude, to discuss the progress of the projects this year in particularly challenging circumstances.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the members and friends of our association for their crucial support of the people of these two distressed countries.

In South Sudan, the vocational training program is in its 18th session.
By the end of 2025, nearly 6,500 young adults had benefited from free training since the launch of this vital project for the region's inhabitants.

But the reputation of the Lologo Vocational Training and Community Development Center is now national, and demand from local communities continues to grow year after year: for the current session, the number of applicants was almost twice as high as for 2025, almost four times as high as for 2024, and more than five times as high as for 2023!
Thus, end of 2025, our local partner - the Saint-Vincent-de-Paul Society, Juba (SVDP) - had to select 480 people (41% women) from the 3,320 applicants for the nine trainings offered this year.

The follow-up study conducted last year on a sample representing 41% of the 2024 batch showed that, a few months after graduation, none of the surveyed graduates were unemployed and 56% were financially independent (according to minimum income criteria).
17% were pursuing university studies, 11% were undertaking further training, and 4% were completing internships in companies.

The Be In Hope (BIH) street children program welcomed five new beneficiaries at the beginning of the year, replacing the five who, having reached the age limit at the end of 2025, left the program through the family reunification program established by SVDP.

The stories that led these boys to the streets are dramatic and heartbreaking.

Solomon's (11 years old) family left Khartoum in 2022 when war broke out in Sudan. His father, a soldier, was killed in combat. His father's comrades helped bring his family to Juba. His grandfather, with whom they had been taken in, died a year later. A year after that, his mother, who had become a dishwasher in a restaurant, fell ill and died. Orphaned and without any support, Solomon began scavenging for bottles and hazardous materials to survive.

Pati (12 years old, pictured here before joining the program) was born in the Konyokonyo market. His mother, who was homeless, was later taken in by her sister in Lologo. Pati, who doesn't know the identity of his father, never went to school and struggled to find food. His mother drinks heavily and suffers from mental illness. She told him one day to go back to live in the market, where he was born.

Andrew's (12 years old) father left his mother when she was pregnant with him. Andrew was born in the Konyokonyo market and lived there with his mother, begging. His mother became an alcoholic and had three more children by different fathers. She later married and had daughters. After a while, his stepfather rejected all the children who weren't his own. Andrew lived in the market of Rajaf (where the BIH home is located), surviving on food scraps. His mother would regularly disappear for several days at a time to return to Konyokonyo.

Noël's mother (15 years old) separated from his father after the latter suffered a motorcycle accident that left him with mental health issues. She remarried a man who hated Noël and refused to take him in.

The integration of these boys into the BIH program immediately guarantees them a safe, stable, and healthy environment.
In the medium term, they will regain trust in adults, their peers, and themselves.
In the long term, the program should allow them to reintegrate into society, like the beneficiaries who came before them.

We are therefore proud of the progress of five alumni who, thanks to the sponsorship program implemented by SVDP, are now pursuing higher education:
- Thokwath, in his third year of medical school at Haramaya University in Ethiopia;
- Phillip, in his second year of laboratory technology studies at Upper Nile University in Malakal, South Sudan;
- Ajuot, in his first year of Political Science at the University of Juba;
- Simon and Koang, in their first year at the Faculty of Health Sciences at Lanet Liyana in Ethiopia.

As you can see, this BIH program, while more modest than the vocational training program, involves a long-term commitment: we don't abandon our former protégés "into the wild," which is so harsh in South Sudan.
For example, SVDP recently responded to a request for help from Thokwath (see above), who had been suffering from eye problems for a year and hadn't received a satisfactory diagnosis in Ethiopian public hospitals. Thanks to a small donation given in May to pay for a consultation at a private clinic, he received treatment for inflammation and the obstruction of certain glands, which was causing dry eyes and stinging.
If this obstruction had persisted, it could have led to blepharitis or even glaucoma.

We sincerely thank you for your trust and generosity!

Thanks to your loyalty, we can meet essential needs and offer these children and young adults a real chance to build their future.

Florence Rivollet
President