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

« My words are addressed to you, young people of France and Europe (…) I have been called to the five continents to respond to the dramas of misery, violence and war, where the man is a wolf to man. But, everywhere, I met young go-getters, vibrant with energy; they never admitted defeat, no matter how horrible the tragedies.  »

Dear Friends,

While generosity is mobilizing all Europe to help the Ukraine war victims, I come to give you news of the programs that we support in two distant countries whose populations have been living in particularly dramatic situations for so many years. Following the inspiration of Sister Emmanuelle, its founder, ASASE takes its action over the long term to enable poor populations in South Sudan and Haiti to live upright, with dignity, despite a chaotic and violent environment.

On March 14, the World Food Program (WFP) warned: "While global attention remains fixed on Ukraine, a hidden food emergency is engulfing South Sudan with about 8.3 million people - including refugees - who will experience extreme hunger in the coming months”. According to Mrs Badejo, Deputy Director of WFP in South Sudan, "The extent and depth of this disaster is unsettling. We are seeing individuals throughout the nation have exhausted all their available options to make ends meet and now they are left with nothing”.

Three consecutive years of unprecedented flooding in some regions, irregular and insufficient rains in the wet season in other regions (such as Juba where our programs are located), local conflicts often fueled by ruling elites, all this explains the plight of displaced populations, whose numbers have increased further since the official end of the civil war more than three years ago.

Despite everything, the teams of our local partner, the Saint-Vincent-de-Paul Society, Juba, are courageously and effectively continuing their efforts to help the most disadvantaged in the capital region.

• Thus, during the beautiful ceremony which has just taken place at the Vocational Training and Community Development Center in Lologo, 305 young adults have received their certificates in the 7 training courses provided in 2021. (Picture: one of the (rare) female trainees of the 2021 Auto Repair training session.)

• Maintenance work was carried out in March in the Saint Vincent Health Care Center.

• Three new street children have just been welcomed into the Be In Hope home. They joined the 22 other boys benefiting from the program.
When they leave the program at 18, many have not completed their schooling.
As from this year, with 280 CHF you can sponsor for one year certain alumni who want to finish their schooling: they will be able to spend a little less time working to pay in particular their tuition fees.

• On the land of the pilot farm of Nyarjwa, the works for the digging of the water recovery basins of the seasonal river and the installation of the lining at the bottom have been completed. In the vicinity of the irrigation basin, vegetable production will be improved and stabilized by this supplementary irrigation when rainfall is insufficient in the dry season.

News from Haiti

After an exhausting five-day trip due to flight cancellations, Jean Claude François, the manager of the programs we support in Haiti, spent six weeks in Hinche earlier this year.

Anarchy reigns in this country which still has neither President nor Parliament. Every day, rich or poor people are kidnapped. Insecurity and the pandemic have had consequences on the functioning of the programs of the Cosmos Foundation, our local partner.

• Thus the Bethesda College, which has 500 students, has seen its numbers drop over the past two years: parents, who fear kidnappings, are looking for closer schools.
To encourage pupils (some of whom are street children), the college has increased the number of scholarships offered. In addition, a project is underway with the parish priest in charge of the local Caritas branch to provide a meal for the pupils.

• Even if the health auxiliaries of the dispensaries located in the rural areas of the Hinche plateau fear kidnappings, they operate 24 out of the 28 dispensaries managed by the Cosmos Foundation.
Each quarter, each dispensary receives 10 liters of medicines produced by the herbal medicine laboratory PhytoCosmos. The Bronchomal helped in particular to treat people affected by the Omicron variant of Covid: patients were cured in two days!

• The Polytech technical school has trained 300 people in tiling, masonry, IT, aesthetics/cosmetics and topography techniques. For the 12 surveyors (out of 25) who graduated after their three years of study, the prospects of finding a lucrative job are real, knowing that the prices of the services of surveyors have quintupled in a few years.
• Jean Price Mars University has 400 students in the faculties of civil engineering, agronomy, accounting, law, nursing and theology (about ten).
The university is proud to have set up a new section in Political Science, which the country really needs! This unit has about twenty registrants for the moment.
In July, after their thesis defense, twelve students (in law, management and education sciences) should receive the first masters delivered on the Central Plateau!
(Picture: Jean Claude (standing in the background), the program manager (and certified auditor in Geneva) gives a course to the students of the Master in Business Law.)

A big thank you in advance for your donation: with 120 CHF for example, you offer a one-year university scholarship to a Haitian for Jean Price Mars University!

We wish you a very happy Easter!

Patrick Bittar
Director