Below is a letter received in Sept. 2006 from a sister who works at the Holy Cross Student Center in Mali located in West Africa. She is writing on behalf of the students at the school. Every year, part of the homeroom missions collection is sent off to help under-privileged children receive a quality education. With your contribution, a young girl can afford a year of schooling with meals, lodging, and study materials. Every time the missions envelope comes around the room in the morning, remember this letter and who you are helping with your contribution!

Dear Friends,

Again this year the Holy Cross Student Center here in Siharro (Mali) in West Africa experienced your solidarity and your generosity. And again we cannot say thank you enough. Without help from many people, the girls who come to the city to study would simply not be able to find the minimum required for meals, lodging, and studies.

That girls should go to school at all is a wonderful achievement and there are relatively few who get to do that. Finding adequate lodging when they leave their village to come to the city for junior or senior high school is a challenge difficult to meet and also difficult to imagine for students who have never lived in a community such as here where the daily struggle against poverty is rugged, to say the least. Your care and concern about that – as shown through your contributions – is so good to see... to feel... to touch. Very concretely, it means that this year two girls can eat, sleep, and have the school materials needed for the entire year because you thought of them and shared with them.

Again I thank you in their name and in the name of the Holy Cross Center Sisters who work here with them in their education project. I thank your principal and Sr. Therese St-Pierre in a very specific way… and invite all of you to visit!

St. Therese Martine CSC