VOCES Vicentinas

So many of you have been generous these past two years. We still need your help! Right now, we have fourteen students studying at the university level and prices continue to rise. Right now it takes about $850 per year for each student. That’s a bargain at US rates, but unreachable for our young people. They all work to help support their study, but they need your help. This is Claudia, who is in a pre-law program. She wants to return to Mocomoco and enter into politics, to promote the kinds of changes that will help her people (90% of the residents of Mocomoco live below the Bolivian poverty line).

We also are expanding our efforts at religious formation and leadership training. For that, we need to build regional centers — building new buildings or revamping existing ones. We have a basic design for a chapel/formation center that costs about $7,000. We have a promised match of up to $3,500 per year, so with your help we can do one new project or three “refits” each year. The chapel/formation center in Wilacala, to which you have so generously donated, will be finished in the spring of 2012!

Finally, human development and capacity building is at the heart of a special project called “Sayt’asim!” (Stand Up! in the Aymara language). This is a multi-year project which includes family stabilization, nutritional assistance, job training, and small business development through micro-loans. Our superior general recently visited, and could see that it’s an incredible dollar value, and will do much to help the people lift themselves from poverty.

Please be generous once again this Christmas. This link will direct you to a page where you can easily donate. You can target your donation, or just make a general donation and let us apply it when the need arises. Thanks, and have a blessed holiday season!