Kia Ora Kevinian's and Friends of the College
As part of the Edmund Rice Education Across Boarders gathering in Nairobi, Kenya, I was humbled to visit some of the nearly 2.5 million local families living in abject poverty. This immersion experience was my first. I met people severely deprived of basic human needs, including food, safe drinking water, sanitation facilities, health, shelter and education. They were living in these conditions through no fault of their own. The visit was an affront to my senses, with the smell of open sewers and fetid rubbish etched in my mind. We were privileged to be hosted by the staff and students of the Mary Rice Centre in the Kibera slum,which is the largest in Africa and one of the biggest in the world. The Centre is a school for the physically and mentally challenged young people of the slum and is run by the Christian Brothers with funding from schools from around the world. We also visited the Ruben Centre which helps locals with medical, educational and financial needs. The scale of the deprivation was overwhelming and as we begin the next part of this gathering, we have our thinking framed by these powerful images of the challenges being faced by those living at the margins. I would ask you to keep our work in your prayers as we chart the direction of Edmund Rice Education at the global level.
God Bless
Paul Olsen, Principal
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