The Charity Programme reaches its fifth edition A chance encounter between the Sisters of Charity of the Shire community in Tigray, Ethiopia, and a group of researchers from the Catholic University of Milan, led by Prof. Marco Lombardi, gave birth to a life long collaboration between our Congregation and, subsequently, the Thouret Foundation and CeSI, the University Center for International Solidarity. This collaboration strengthened, expanded, and become a true friendship. It was 2017 when Prof. Marco Lombardi, after completing his research on the Cunama and Irob ethnic groups, located in specific areas on the extreme edges of Tigray, visited the mission of the Sisters of Charity in Shire, where he had been a guest for a few days.

Faced with the liveliness of the children of the Jeanne Antide nursery school, who were performing dances and games with great skill and seriousness, he said: “But wouldn’t you need some volunteers—students who could come and work with the teachers for a few weeks?” The sisters immediately welcomed the idea with joy, well aware of the level of preparation of the teaching staff, which certainly needed to be improved. All it took were first contacts with the CeSI staff and a few meetings in Milan. For two years, two young students from the Catholic University of Milan organized training sessions with both children and teachers at the Shire nursery school; one of them, happy with the experience, repeated it personally. With the arrival of the pandemic that interrupted the trips and experiences, we turned to “Italian resources,” closer to home, in collaboration with the Arrupe Center in Rome, where, under the guidance of Sr. Paola Arosio, some young women began to serve the guests, mothers, children, and adolescents. The programme resumed its vitality in 2023, with the sending of two students to the Nemesia Academy in Bangalore, with the intention of contributing to the teaching of both English and science subjects. Year after year, the joy of the sisters at the presence of the young women, who also participate in the life of the community, has led to the third edition of the programme. This year two young women will once again spend most of the month of August with the students of the Nemesia Academy and their teachers.

The desire to involve students from the Faculty of Medicine led to broader community involvement, particularly in the community of Ngaoundal in Cameroon, where the sisters run the St. Jeanne Antide district hospital. The experiences were positive in this case as well, and in particular, in the last year, 2024, the testimony of the two students was so inspiring that it encouraged other young people to get involved in this adventure… This year, two final years students have already left, and will be joined by a young woman who is part of the university’s administrative staff. In fact, this year we are starting a new experience, one that involves not only students,