minims and maxims: Summer 2002

Several hundred thousand Burundians have fled the civil war in their tiny central African country and found refuge in neighboring Tanzania. Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) serves many of the camps, including the Mtendeli Refugee Camp, where this mother holds her child at the back of a crowd overflowing outside a church.

JRS runs a number of unique projects in the camps that go beyond meeting basic needs. Pastoral care and counseling are among the programs the organization offers, as well as AIDS education and awareness for refugees. In addition, JRS helps support schools that educate over 3,000 children in the camps, from teaching English classes to managing the school libraries.

Marquette University High Students Journey to Dominican Republic, Ecuador

Somos Amigos—We are Friends—is a program that has taken Marquette University High students to rural and poverty-stricken areas of the Dominican Republic for the past six years. Last summer a second trip was added to urban Quito, Ecuador, where students tutored and cared for children at the Working Boys' Center.

Established by Fr. John Halligan, SJ, in 1964, the center was formed to educate shoe-shine boys. Over the years it has expanded to include shelter, food, child care, health care, and education programs. Marquette students are required to speak Spanish and help teach adults to read. Because of the overwhelming interest in the programs, this summer a third trip has been added to a Jesuit high school in Guayaquil, Ecuador. — MUHS magazine

Creighton Prep Students Provide Computers for Africa

The 25 members of the Computers for Africa Club at Creighton Prep collect, refurbish, and ship used computers to East African high schools and nonprofit organizations. The group, founded in 1999 by Fr. Jim Strzok, SJ, now a missionary in Kenya, does everything from installing ethernet cards to breaking down cardboard boxes.

"First we check out the computers to be sure they have all their parts and can function," says junior Tim Kelley, who heads the club. "We usually add memory. Then we fix odd problems, like when there's no video output. The ‘fun' part is when things go wrong."

The club, in the process of gaining nonprofit status, has a web site, www.computers4 africa.org, to help spread the word about their mission. — Jesuit Journeys

Portland's Jesuit High School Teaches Survival English to Area Residents

Esteban Gaspar (far left), originally from Mexico City, hopes to get around better after he graduates from his "survival" English program at Jesuit High School in Portland, Oregon; sophomore volunteer tutor Marcy Alcantar (left) is helping see to that.

Jesuit High's English Language Outreach program got off the ground January with thirty students, a director, two teachers, and student volunteers. The school wanted to put the talents its people had and its physical resources, especially classrooms, to work for its community. They identified a need many foreign-born residents of nearby Beaverton have: learning English.

Meeting two nights a week for a ten-week term, they start by conquering the alphabet, numbers, and time in the new language and go on to learn how to fill out job applications, talk with doctors, write checks, navigate grocery stores, and decipher menus.

Most of the students have come from Latin America in the last few years with a variety of educational backgrounds. The children learn English at school, but their parents run the risk of getting left behind in the language race.

After years of work in restaurants and factories, Esteban is looking forward to better jobs and something even more important: "I'm not just doing this for me, but for my little girl, so we can learn to speak English together." — Karen Crandal, Jesuit High

Santa Clara Volunteers Help Create a Safe Place for Abused Women

Last November, the first of 24 residents moved into HomeSafe, a transitional house for battered women and their children near Santa Clara University. HomeSafe is a collaborative effort of seven local charities that provides shared housing for women and children and allows residents to stay for up to 24 months. The center offers psychological, career, and family counseling as well as other activities.

The SCU community has been involved on many levels: faculty and staff donated thousands of household items, clothing, bedding, and kitchen supplies among them; mechanical engineering professor Ruth Davis secured a grant to provide the home with a computer lab; other faculty members have offered to make parenting and life skills classes available; the career center will hold resumé and job skills workshops; and the women's basketball and soccer teams plan to run athletic mentoring programs for the children. — Santa Clara Magazine

World Youth Day 2002

Canadian and French Jesuits will combine forces for World Youth Day in Toronto this July to launch the "Friends in the Lord—Amis dans le Seigneur," an Ignatian pilgrimage that will run in association with World Youth Day. Organizers expect to attract hundreds of thousands of people from over 150 countries.

The Ignatian events will take place at the Martyrs' Shrine in Midland, Ontario, where Jesuit missionaries ministered and gave their lives in witness to the gospels. Using the shrine as a base, participants will travel in groups of 750 to 1000 each morning to a different site, including St. Ignace, where St. Jean de Brebeuf and Gabrielle Lalement were martyred; Ste Marie Among the Hurons, a reconstructed 17th-century Jesuit mission; and the Wyandotte Village, a reconstructed 17th-century aboriginal settlement visited by the Jesuits. The evenings will offer masses, concerts, dramas, common night prayer, and testimonials. More information is available at www.jesuits.ca/ania2002

Commencement Speakers at Jesuit Colleges and Universities this Spring

Smiles

Parting Quote

Reader Mary Carver, from Raleigh, N.C., heard this from family friend Fr. Tom Fay, SJ (1892–1969) who, 60 years ago, was teaching at Cranwell Prep, a Jesuit boarding school in Massachusetts. One day he drove a student, who had been suspended, to the train station. Some of the student's friends came along to say goodbye. As the student boarded the train, he turned solemnly to his friends and said, "A little while and you shall see me no longer for I go to the father." Fr. Fay had to dash behind a column to avoid scandalizing the boys with his smiles.

Vow of Poverty

"I drove Cardinal Avery Dulles, SJ," writes Fr. Claudio Burgaleta, SJ, professor at Fordham University, "to Kennedy Airport for a flight to Rome for the meeting of the cardinals and the pope on sex abuse. We were to stop at the police building and arrange for the cardinal's escort through security. The officer at the parking lot was skeptical. Just a few minutes before, Cardinal Egan had been through and had just left in his limo with a police escort for the terminal. I explained there were two cardinals in New York. The explanation satisfied him; I left Cardinal Dulles in his ten-year-old Toyota Tercel in the lot and went in to find our contact. A sergeant appeared and wanted to know where Cardinal Dulles was. I told him he was in his car. He looked through the glass doors, then sternly stared at me. ‘What car?' I pointed out the Toyota. The sergeant shook his head. ‘What, is he poor?' I responded, ‘Something like that.' Soon after, we lined up the old Tercel behind a cruiser and were escorted to the terminal where the cardinal caught his flight for Rome."

The "Smiles" in our last issue about Seattle University professor Mark West failed to mention the source, which was SUN, the university's alumni publication. Our apologies.

JRS Serves Burundian Refugees through a Variety of Projects