Assistance Abroad

aalogoThe Assistance Abroad Committee allocates funds for small projects in the poorer countries of the world. Requests for funding are often brought to the Committee by parishioners who are directly involved in the projects in their home countries. The personal recommendation by a parishioner (from St John XXIII Parish) has now been adopted as one of our criteria for making grant awards, both to reduce the number of fraudulent requests that come our way and also to ensure that the limited funds we have at our disposal are deployed for a purpose or project that we can have some direct contact with, albeit, through the parishioner making the recommendation. The committee also serves as the Parish’s liaison with Turkana: Our Sister Parish in Turkana, Kenya.

If you have a project please click here for a Grant Application form. When you have completed the form please hand it in or email it to the Parish Office.

To view the latest 2015 Outreach Report, please click here.

Outreach ReportAssistance Abroad Projects

Youth Formation in Timor and Indonesia

graduates-of-computer-course

  • In 2010, a computer course was established for youth and young adults, who are unable to continue their formal education due to the lack of financial means. The course empowers them with the basic skills necessary to find jobs that can render them financially self-sufficient. Through the Parish’s generosity, computer courses were equipped and initiated at two centres: Dili (Timor Leste) and Palla, Sumba (Indonesia).

palla-sumba

  • A girls’ boarding house in Palla, Sumba (Indonesia) was sustained and supported throughout the year of 2011. In this remote village, it is quite common that girls are unable to attend school for mainly two reasons: the financial poverty of the families, and the distances between homes and the village school. The Salesian Sisters’ boarding house, located near the school, is run solely by the charity of those who support its mission, which is to enable girls to get an education. Through the Parish’s generosity, the boarding house continues to help girls to obtain up to a high school education.

Rural Health Unit Philippines

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The Rural Health Unit, Rizal, Cagayan, Philippines received an initial financial grant of SF1000.00 in 2013 which was used to purchased pediatric medicine for the treatment of common illnesses of children (diarrhea and other gastric diseases, acute respiratory diseases, skin diseases ,etc.) in this mountainous town. In 2014, the grant was renewed based on a report which indicated that many children had benefitted from the medicine which have been purchased by the Rural Health Unit. With the renewed grant of SF1500.00, the Medical Officer conducted a medical mission to the very distant and remote barangays, accessible only by trails, to treat children who have not benefitted from the earlier grant. The photographs show the Medical Officer and her staff travelling by foot to the remote areas.