Mother’s Meal Macau recently extended financial help to a needy village in Ethiopia to help train widows and single mothers in animal husbandry.
Fr Abiyot Desalegn, parish priest of Itang’s St Don Bosco Catholic Parish in the Apostolic Vicariate of Gambella, explained that the project, slated to run for six months in six villages covered by the Itang parish, will benefit 130 women.
“In Gambella,” Father Abiyot explains, “it is obvious that the social, economic and political structures have not provided females with equal opportunities for education and remunerative employment and access to production resources. Women’s participation in the decision making process is practically non-existent. They are restricted to the domestic roles, child-bearing and child-rearing.”
The parish priest adds, “Since their educational background is so low, the type of job most women are involved in doesn’t give them enough income to provide for their families. Besides there is almost no service in the region which is specifically designed to give an alternative employment opportunity or help them to be self-employed breadwinners for their families.”
When Fr Jijo Kandamkulathy, CMF, heard about the appeal for help, he immediately spoke with the persons involved in Mother’s Meal to see what they could do. Soon enough, with the support of generous donors, they were able to raise the equivalent MOP 50K needed to run the program.
Fr Abiyot expressed his gratitude for the donation, acknowledging that the time of pandemic did not make it easy to raise funds.
Gambella was established as an Apostolic Prefecture on 16 November 2000, and became an Apostolic Vicariate on 5 December 2009. It was headed by Angelo Moreschi, SDB who became vicar apostolic there when he was ordained bishop in 2010. Incidentally, Bishop Moreschi is the first Catholic bishop who died of coronavirus, on 25 March 2020. He was in Italy at the time for treatment of his diabetes and was undergoing dialysis. (Photos courtesy of Fr Abiyot Desalegn.)
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