Last Friday 17th October, St. Clement’s College held its annual Redemptorist Ethos Day with Bishop Brendan Leahy as our guest speaker. As part of this day, the school organised a Sending out Ceremony for the students and staff of the College travelling to Brazil on a house building project with an NGO called Serve in Solidarity, on 20th of October.
Serve in Solidarity was founded by Fr. Gerry O’ Connor, a Redemptorist Priest and past pupil of St. Clement’s Redemptorist College. The organisation is in existence for over ten years and normally offers the opportunity to third level students to travel and learn from the experience of people in the developing world. On occasions they work with secondary schools and facilitate shorter projects for such students.
The twelve students will spend two weeks in the North East of Brazil in a town called Parnaiba. The purpose of the trip is to build houses for people who have no homes. There is also an element of development education where the students will learn from what they see and experience while in Brazil.They will also get the opportunity to experience a variety of other projects that Serve in Solidarity have been able to fund over the last number of years.It is the first such venture that the school has engaged in but we believe that it will be an experience that will change these students perspective on life.
The twelve students will be accompanied on the trip by three teachers from the school and two Redemptorists, Fr. Gerry O’ Connor CSsR. and Fr, Brian Nolan CSsR, both past pupils of the school. Fr. Gerry O’Connor currently lives and works in Cherry Orchard Parish in Dublin. Fr. Brian Nolan is based at the Redemptorist Community in Limerick and works part-time in St. Clement’s College.
The school had a target of €13,000 to raise to provide the materials to build the houses. The cost of building a home in Brazil is about €3,000. We are delighted to say that the school exceeded this target managing to raise €15,000. The money was raised from a variety of fundraising activities ranging from bag-packs, bucket collections, church collections, non-uniform days, a hike from Kenmare to Killarney, climbing Mangerton mountain, ice bucket challenges and a school sports day.
This project began almost a year ago. It seemed like a daunting task to raise this amount of money at the outset, especially in these difficult times and it is down to the generosity of the whole school community and the surrounding area. We wish all involved the best of luck during this life changing experience!
