Heart to Heart

Sister Magarita, pictured here in the center of this group of students and teachers at Santa María de Nieva - Fe y Alegría 74 School in Peru, shared how the Handmaids in Peru used the Heart to Heart donation they received in 2019. Most of the students at this Handmaid school are Awajun and Wampis, belonging to the Jibaro ethnic group. Their culture is a very old one in the Amazon. 

The school offers a three-year technical training course for young people who have finished high school. Graduates can go on to college or find jobs in agricultural production or in the food industry. A good number of the students live far from school, and the Sisters discovered that many were staying in inadequate housing, on the patios of friends’ houses, with walls and roofs made of plastic (in an area which gets a lot of rain). The students were often hungry because they could not afford food. In response, the Sisters worked to build two residences, one for boys and one for girls. They feed and house more than 100 young people. The Sisters used our 2019 Heart to Heart donations to make improvements to the girls’ residence.  

Each of our 2018-2019 Advisory classes of 6th, 7th, and 8th graders learned about the Handmaid ministries in one of the countries receiving Heart to Heart donations.  The students reflected on how the Sisters are living the Gospel and the demands of Catholic Social Teaching and prepared these brief presentations to share with the Ancillae community. 

Colombia        DR of Congo        Cuba        East Timor          Ecuador

El Salvador         Panama         Peru          Philippines         Vietnam

Donations of any amount assist the Handmaids of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in their mission of educating for love and with love around the world. Here are some examples: 

$2 provides lunch for a child in the Ceibo Renacer neighborhood of Manta, Ecuador 

$10 covers the cost of a monthly nutrition package including powdered milk, rice and sugar for a child undergoing cancer treatment at the Bikop Mission Clinic in Cameroon 

$50 provides a summer program for a child in Cabarien, Cuba 

$67 provides nutritious food for a preschooler in East Timor, a country where almost 40% of children under five are underweight 

$83 enables a woman in Lima, Peru to attend training to secure work and increase her family’s income 

$120 helps the Handmaids purchase books and two nutritious meals a day for a needy student at St. Rafaela Maria School in Naga, Philippines 

$300 provides a scholarship covering tuition, food, and materials for a student at St. Raphaela Mary Primary School in Mpumbu, an impoverished suburb of Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo 

$1,385 builds a solar power plant to supply reliable electricity for the physical therapy unit on Vypin Island, Kochi, India