Extending a Helping Hand

Parishioners at Our Lady of Lourdes, Harpenden have been supporting the work of Moyo Babies Home in Uganda through donations for refurbishment and redecoration work. The parish’s Developing World Group (DWG) has been encouraging parishioners to support the three-stage project to help the home provide a clean and safe environment for the children in its care.
Many children become orphaned during times of conflict and forced displacement. The nature of conflicts in northern Uganda and across the border in South Sudan has made it especially difficult to find relatives of lost and orphaned children. Moyo Babies Home offers hundreds of babies and children a safe and loving environment.
The parish has already sent funds to the home through International Refugee Trust to enable it to refurbish two of the houses. Over Lent, they began raising funds for the refurbishment of the flushing lavatory block. Launching this latest effort, the DWG explained in their letter to parishioners the urgent need: ‘It has developed a number of cracks, which can be breeding grounds for mosquitoes, thereby exacerbating the threat of malaria’. They expect the refurbishment to offer ‘a much cleaner and healthier environment for orphaned, abandoned and vulnerable children under the age of five.’
In a recent letter to the parish, Moyo Babies Home Director Sr Maureen Kojoa wrote to the parish about the transformational effect that the donations had made to the lives of the children, staff and community, and expressed heartfelt gratitude for the support of parishioners.