Sacred Heart, St. Columban's & the Village of Alibang-Tibag
Sacred Heart, St Kilda West and St Columba's, Elwood in partnership with The Village of Alibang-Tibag, Philippines
THE STORY SO FAR:
For the ordinary Christian, to think about mission in a world beset by poverty, injustice and mounting ecological degradation, is most likely to feel an overwhelming sense of hopelessness. The Gospel calls us to care for the poor and excluded in the world but the problems are so much bigger than the resources being attended to them, the causes and effects so complex as to defy understanding. And yet, if your sense of mission demands it, you can't do nothing. So, in the spirit of discovering where their mission lies, three parishioners, Leonie Hinton, Dave Moloney and Sr Claire Griffin, from the parishes of St Kilda West and Elwood in Melbourne journeyed to the Philippines in March to "look, listen and learn" with people whose experience of poverty and injustice has been much more demanding than their own. They were accompanied by Dick Danckert as part of the Columban Partnership Program.
The travelers had prepared for this visit with an enthusiastic group from Elwood and St Kilda West under the direction of Fr Trevor Trotter and with the assistance of Kath Boyle, the Mission and Education officer for the Columbans in the Australia New Zealand Region. In preparation sessions the group talked about what "mission" means in these times, how does Catholic social teaching help us in following our mission and many practicalities about visiting the Philippines. Our long term aims in this undertaking are as much about understanding ourselves in the context of today's world and bringing a wider awareness to our communities as they are about the specific activities we might engage in.
In the Philippines our activities were organised and facilitated by Fr Dom Nolan. We walked around some of the poorer parts of Manila, visited the parish in Malate, which is run by the Columbans, and then headed north to Olongapo. Here our focus was on visiting village communities where the Grameen Bank of KAZAMA plays an important role in financing very small business developments undertaken by people so poor that they can't even get inside the front door of a commercial bank.
The story of Grameen banks in this area was well told in an interview with Fr Sean Connaughton in The Far East of August 2001. In brief Grameen banks lend to people who have no asset and no credit history and whose only opportunity to escape their imposed poverty is by building a productive enterprise of their own. Fr Sean handed us over to a succession of bank employees who invited us to their branch meetings. We met many brave and adventurous people using the facilities of the bank to build businesses that enable them to buy the most basic things in life ? food, shelter and an education for their children. We also gained, first hand, an understanding of the bank's processes and future needs. It is a bank that runs on the slimmest of reserves because the demand is so great that all possible money that can be made available for lending is. When loan repayments fall behind recourse is had to borrowings from the Philippine Land Bank. This is expensive money. Especially when the branch in need is still a long way from operating autonomously on its own lending.
One key factor in the Grameen bank that offsets the risk of operating on such slim reserves is the processes that attach to borrowing. Individuals can only borrow as one of a support group of five borrowers each of whom is borrowing independently for their own project.. Each undertakes to support the repayments of the others in the event of hard times or misfortune. A number of groups make up a branch and the branch meets weekly for a repayment session. Everybody must attend. (At one branch meeting a customer sent an apology for non-attendance. She had had a baby the night before. She also sent her repayment with one of her group members.) The repayment sessions are also an opportunity to talk about community and general issues and are used by the branch managers as education sessions on just about anything you could think of. While this might seem a bit paternalistic in our terms we were all struck by the joy and sense of community that enlivened all of the meetings we attended. There is a determination here to succeed.
These days had been fairly demanding on us both physically and emotionally. A couple of days to reflect and refresh was just what we needed. We did that at Silang, about 60km south of Manila at an ecology centre supported by the Columbans. Here we shared our reflections on our experience and started to discern a way forward to an ongoing relationship.In the words of Sr Claire: The invitation for our fairly comfortable parishes to become part of a Partnership Project with the Columbans was a great way for us to focus our energies and interests as Christians trying to work for justice today. Being able to form a small group with other parishioners and to visit some "salt of the earth people" in the Philippines has really fired us anew to continue our learning and to work together sharing what we have and doing our small bit to overcome some of the injustice and poverty that the wonderful people of the Philippines live with every day.
Now back at home the group in Elwood/St Kilda West is working on ways to support the KAZAMA Grameen, to continue to develop friendships with the people of Alibang, one of the communities we visited, and to continue on our own mission of being the Gospel in this particular way.
