At its meeting on 10 November 2023, the Committee for Charitable Interventions for the Development of Peoples of the Catholic Church approved 31 new projects.
Among the most significant interventions, six will be carried out in Africa: in Burkina Faso, in Chad, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, in Madagascar, in Ethiopia with health centres for rural and displaced populations, for children with disabilities, for a professional technical institute, for the construction of wells and water plants, for beekeeping and coffee cultivation.
Also in the field of agriculture is the project promoted in the Central African Republic by the Sisters of Charity of Seint Jeanne Antide Thouret who in Wotoro, in the diocese of Berberati, will enhance the “Sara Mbi Ga Zo” agro-pastoral training centre to promote the self-sustenance of the community that accommodates 60 disadvantaged children and offer agricultural and zootechnical training to 15 workers.
Sara Mbi Ga Zo is an expression of the local language, sango, meaning: Help me become a man / Help me realise my life. In addition to farming, the boys attend literacy classes, carpentry, tailoring, animal husbandry and basket making. Two educators stay day and night with the boys, while the other animators and monitors go there according to schedule.
The aim: to help each boy to re-read his life, to take care of his wounded personality, to recover serenity, to abandon violent behaviour, accepting the past and planning the future according to their possibilities.
The intervention is part of a broader education and protection programme involving some 25 Central African couples, who have made themselves available to take in the children, after a long process of social and psychological training by an Italian sister, sister Elvira Tutolo, who has been accompanying the families for over 10 years.
In 2001, the couples involved set up the NGO Kizito (also recognised nationally in CAR since 2011), which aims to respond in an innovative way to the problem of children’s vulnerability. To date, 25 families have joined the NGO, which has taken in 90 children between the ages of 6 and 17 in the form of family reintegration. Another 30, for a total of 120 children taken in, are housed at a Pedagogical Farm, managed by the NGO itself and located in Wotoro, near the town of Berberati. The NGO Kizito has now become a stable reality in CAR, recognised locally (it collaborates actively with the Municipality, the Prefecture, the Court and the city prison) and nationally, especially as a valid experience, unique in the country, of an alternative to prison for minors.
