Rice Bowl Project: Lenten Season, 2020
Churches Together in Rome
Different national and local crises have led to many Africans leaving their homes and searching for a new place to live. In the last 18 months, well over 2,500 more have arrived on this small island country. They arrive exhausted, grieving the loss of husbands, wives or children on their journey through the Sahara, then Libya’s conflicts and across the Mediterranean to Malta.
The island which welcomed St. Paul then puts them into detention; into open centres where the tents and “cabins” (old shipping containers) breed disease in the baking heat of summer, and misery in the damp cold of winter.
In the 2000’s as the need grew the St. Andrew’s Scots Church, Malta began to respond to this need. Later the Church of Scotland and the Methodist Church, and the two parent churches of St. Andrew’s Scots Church begun to help in a small way. It has now become an organized charity run by the Church of Scotland and coordinates with the Red Cross of Malta. But as the mission project has grown, so has the vision. Out of Africa … into Malta is now looking at longer-term initiatives which will help take people out of the camps and refugee centers permanently. At the core of this vision is an effective way of multiplying the benefits of your giving.
What the project does
• Provide for their daily needs of food, clothing, and housing.
• Micro-financing for the refugees and it also hopes to offer assistance to the poorest Maltese families to create a real chance of achieving better integration among people from widely differing background and experience, but whose problems are shared.
• Provides a Community drop-in center to help people meet others and developing supportive relationships.
• Work with the Jesuit Refugee Service, providing maternity support to the many young women who arrive pregnant.
• Teaches English to improve their opportunities for employment.
• Provide a place for children to play and have fun.
This project is supported by the Churches Together in Rome
