December 23, 2005

CCI wishes everyone a Merry Christmas!

Roxana Robin sent the following message detailing the latest news from the Rainbow Centre.

Hello everyone,

I wanted to let everybody know that Christmas has arrived for CCI. That’s right! This week, we welcomed 13 new children into our Centre.

Most of these children worked as fishermen, domestic slaves, stone quarry labourers, or workers in shrimp plants. They come from three different fishing villages, one of which we are familiar with (six of our children come from that same village). Therefore, we are helping five separate fishing villages and nearly 60 parents.

We no longer need to search for children in need of our help—the people in the community come and tell us which children are in danger.

It has taken us two years of dedicated work to gain the confidence of parents and village leaders. Now, they are the ones who ask us to take in certain children. However, we must be careful and continue to research each case brought to our attention. Some of the children referred to our Centre are not necessarily being exploited, and some do not even work.

One day, on our way back from a fishing village, we came across two little boys watching over some buffalo. The boys appeared to be in terrible shape, so we stopped to talk to them. After discussions with the boys’ village leader, we learned that two other children were also in similarly precarious situations. One boy is an orphan and has absolutely nobody to care for him, although some of the villagers do feed him. He is about seven years old and must work in order to survive. A little 10-year-old girl left her father’s home because her stepmother beat her. She went to live with her very old grandmother and must now work as a domestic slave to support herself.

These four children will be among those welcomed into our new Centre once it is completed.

The children have started a sewing, needlepoint, and crochet class. They are extremely talented with their hands and produce beautiful work.

Seven of the children are preparing to write the Government exams that will enable them to enter a private school in June 2006. We chose a really nice school that boasts excellent results. The children will be bussed to school and back to the Centre every day.

After two years of work, it’s a tremendous joy knowing that some of these children will finally live normal teenage lives, go to school, make new friends, have a social life, etc.

And we haven’t forgotten the parents. On Sunday, two nurses came to teach them about basic hygiene practices and contraception.

In the fishing villages, many women suffer from gynaecological problems and often die very young due to a lack of hygiene knowledge.

While tracking the children in one of the villages the day before yesterday, I saw a young woman about 32 years old (my age) who has four children and is already a grandmother! Her 15-year-old daughter just gave birth to a stillborn baby.

In short, the children and I wish you all a very Merry Christmas. An extra special thank you goes out to the Sœurs de la Congrégation Notre-Dame who gave us a magnificent Christmas gift—we will always remember this act of genuine kindness.

Roxana Robin
General Director of the CCI

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