Helping the world’s kids to a new start

Sydney
23 March 2003

Helping the world’s kids to a new start

One in five kids living in poverty

ACU model for rest to follow: Beattie

Transsexual ‘marriage’

Refugees ‘destitute’

Curtain falls on Woomera

Expo peek aids hospital

Call for inquiry into needs of low-paid staff

Catholic Weekly takes a holiday over Easter

Pope’s 25 years in stamps

New mysteries on pocket cards

CD to help East Timorese kids

New Vinnies head wants to ensure best deal for needy

Conference celebrates the faith

Medicare principles ‘must be safeguarded’

Bougainville - after the war is over

Fast and feast in lent

Editorial: The poverty line

Letters: Tabernacle

Conversation: Dr Henry Pang, GP and aid volunteer - Dead people all around ‘changes your life’

Voice of Youth: ‘O’ - what a feeling! We’re Catholics

Plea from the bush: Come and see us

Waverley’s 100 years of ‘bright stars’

Young train as catechists

Lay ministry great, says jubilee priest

Helping the world’s kids to a new start

Amadu (above) may be only 12, but he has seen more of life and death in his short life than most of us would in a long lifetime.

He was kidnapped at nine and forced to become one of Sierra Leone’s tragic child soldiers. Amadu, and thousands like him, experienced slavery of a most violent and pernicious kind, robbing them of their childhood.

Today, though, he is free. Today he is the face of Caritas’ Project Compassion 2003 and its message: Freedom from Slavery.

Caritas Australia supports the Children Associated with War program in Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone, where children like Amadu are taught to be kids again.

Not all of Caritas’ work is so confronting. On page 5, we tell of Jennifer, who lives in Bougainville, and whose school Caritas helped rebuild after the civil war there.

Some of Jennifer’s Year 5 classmates are in their early 20s - catching up on the education they missed during the long war years.

Because of donations like yours, Jennifer, Amadu and countless others have the chance of a better and longer life ... through Caritas.