Sustaining the Mind and Spirit…
The first time I noticed the Jesuit Refugee Services was in Rwanda. During the estimated 100-day period from 7 April into July 1994, a genocidal mass slaughter of the Tutsi population took place in Rwanda. It is estimated approximately 800,000 Tutsi men, women and children were massacred by the Hutu majority. After the carnage and a Tutsi victory in an ensuing civil war, nearly 2 million Hutus fled across the border into refugee camps; established in the eastern portion of Zaire [now, the Democratic Republic of the Congo]. For two years, Zaire ‘inherited’ a continuing war between the Tutsi and Hutu being fought inside its territory. On the morning of 15 November 1996, the soldiers of Zaire began to empty the refugee camps and force approximately 1 million Hutu across the border back into Rwanda.
While I was in the area, delivering humanitarian assistance for another aid organization, I began to notice JRS. They were hard working and placed themselves in midst of the worst of the humanitarian disaster. I started to coordinate the distribution of food and medicine with JRS and was impressed with their dedication and the professionalism. Over the next twenty years, I watched them provide humanitarian assistance around the globe. While most aid organizations work with the provision of food, water, shelter and medicine – all necessary components to sustain life, I witnessedJRS move in a different direction to sustain the mind and spirit. In the midst of the deprivation, misery and hopelessness of refugee camps and destitute place around the world, JRS has engaged in a focus, which brings light and hope to the darkness. It is Education. While refugee families struggle to keep their children engaged in living and hopefulness, it becomes an impossible quest. When the refugees’ lives are filled with a daily pursuit to keep their families alive and healthy, the education of their children becomes a luxury that is impossible for them to fulfill.
JRS focuses on the one thing that moves a child away from the desperate realities of their surroundings and gives them the one gift they crave the most. It is Hope. Inside the despairing refugee camps in Lebanon, Jordan, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Cambodia, Uganda, Sudan and a number of other complex, dangerous and war torn disaster areas throughout the world. JRS provides education and confidence to the most vulnerable residents of these camps. They offer hope to children and young men and women without regard to race, religionor ethnicity. There is no proselytizing. JRS maybe a Christian organization, but you would never know it unless you step back and associate their name with what they are known by – JRS. Their approach to humanitarian assistance is without qualification.
My association with JRS is as an observer, but their Mercy in Motioncampaign, which supports the JRS Global Education Initiativeto expand and strengthen their education programs is an initiative that not only benefits children and young people in refugee camps. It provides an essential contribution to a longer-term pursuitfor peace and justice throughout the world. Their focus on education and an egalitarian approach to the rights and dignity of all human beings is the key to thwarting the extremistproclamations that rise from the pain, poverty and deprivation of the refugee camps. JRS provides an education based on free and critical thinking and as such fosters analysis and the investigation of motives.
Bob Macpherson
Parishioner St Peter Catholic Church Charlotte, NC
Chair, Outreach andSocial Justice Commission