Missionary Childhood Association
Country of the Month Archive
As members of the Missionary Childhood Association, students have a direct impact on the lives of their brothers and sisters in over 1,100 mission territories around the world. These lesson plans give a brief overview of the featured country (including country and continental maps) as well as an example, with pictures, of the work that missionaries accomplish with your students’ help. Country facts and statistics come from a variety of sources: CIA World Factbook, World Atlas, Wikipedia, and various (Arch)diocesan websites, among many others.
Africa
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MCA in Angola
The country of Angola is still plagued by the problem of land mines left from their civil war. Cheap to plant and expensive to dig up, children continue to be maimed by inadvertently triggering one. The Missionary Childhood Association funds project to provide prosthetic limbs to children who are maimed in explosions. MCA is also helping support children who suffer from another effect of the war – the loss of their parents. Divine Word Missionaries, founded by Saint Arnold Janssen, run a Welcome Center that provides, education, vocational skills, and of course, the knowledge that God loves them. Read about the other project provided by these MCA supported missionaries.
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MCA in Burundi
In Burundi, the Missionary Childhood Association is helping is children who are at high risk of exploitation. Promised an education, they instead find themselves in slave labor in mining, farming, or construction. Read how MCA is helping missionaries create a safe haven for these children as well as those orphaned by ethnic violence in the country.
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MCA in Cameroon
Indoor plumbing should be a given in any school and Missionary Childhood is helping to make that a reality in Cameroon. Improved sanitation means cleaner, healthier children and less missed school time due to illness. Children are living up to the school motto of Pray, Work, and Play thanks to Missionary Childhood!
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MCA in Egypt
Sometimes the best work of the Missionary Childhood Association is helping children have fun! Read about our former National Director bringing gifts, fun, and face painting at Christmas time to children in Egypt on behalf of Missionary Childhood members here in the United States. What better way to celebrate the holidays then with family – our One Family in Mission!
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MCA in Ghana
Sarah is a twelve-year-old Ghanaian girl who says a missionary named Sister Stan “saved my life.” Read how Sister’s Nazareth Home has become a haven for children abandoned by their families, thanks to help from the Missionary Childhood Association.
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MCA in Thika, Kenya
Hear from Eunice, a twelve-year-old girl, who lives in one room with her mom, sister, and two young nephews. The Assumption Sisters are impacting her life with help from the Missionary Childhood Association. Eunice has dreams of being a doctor – read her story as she overcomes the challenges of poverty, with the help of many, including our members.
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MCA and Two Sundays in Kenya
Read the stories of two different Sunday Masses in Kenya – one celebrated in a large, city slum with a Maryknoll Missionary priest and the other in a large agricultural, country community with a native priest. What are the commonalities? Joy, music, and celebration of faith are some. The presence of Missionary Childhood members is another! Read how they told, “We do not only receive, we also give.” Their bishop encourages everyone to celebrate World Mission Sunday – a day when the whole world rejoices in the missionary work of the Church!
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MCA in Lesotho
At Sacred Heart Parish in a small, rural village in Lesotho, Mission Childhood is partnering with the Salesian Fathers to provide a place of rest, relaxation, and fun for children who don’t have much opportunity for it. MCA supports a Community Center where children can play soccer and learn the skills needed for chess and checkers – discipline and concentration. They may also be trained as altar servers so they can pray as hard as they play!
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MCA in Madagascar
Sister Rose of the Daughters of Wisdom has dedicated her life to teaching the children of Madagascar how much God loves them. Luckily, she has support from the Missionary Childhood Association so that she has the faith formation supplies that she needs to help the children grown spiritually!
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MCA in Chikwawa, Malawi
Because malnutrition is such a problem for children in Malawi, Missionary Childhood members in that country decided to do an outreach program to children in their own country. Read about the “Blanket Drive” that MCA held to help children with little body fat stay warm at night. This reflects our motto of “Children Helping Children!”
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MCA and Health Care in Malawi
The Missionary Childhood Association is supporting the Rosarian Sisters who work to provide health care to children. MCA funding has allowed the Sisters to purchase infant-sized respirators, helping infants born in respiratory distress. The Sisters also run 42 different projects for children who have been orphaned by the local HIV/AIDS crisis. The children are given a loving home in which to thrive. They also become MCA members themselves, praying daily and sacrificing what little they can.
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MCA in Mzuzu, Malawi
Membership in Missionary Childhood is not just for students in the better-funded parts of the world – it’s for all Catholic students, no matter where they live! Read how some students in Malawi benefit from a mobile health unit while others meet for a Diocesan MCA Mission Education Day with their bishop, just like Boston’s students do with Cardinal Seán!
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MCA in Niger
Missionary Childhood is helping to meet a great challenge in Niger, where many families still live as nomads and travel seasonally to farm. In order to achieve a higher literacy rate, children must be met where they are in order to improve the likelihood that they will become educated.
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MCA in Nigeria
In some countries, Missionary Childhood is known as Holy Childhood. Nigeria is one of them! Read ho their Holy Childhood members came together recently to hold a music festival to benefit the missions. Perhaps it will inspire you to do the same for the missions!
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MCA in Rwanda
In the small village of Kibeho, Rwanda, the Blessed Mother appeared to three young people and asked them to tell people to pray to ward off coming violence. The message went unheeded and the Rwandan Genocide took place, in which an estimated 800,000 people were killed. 5,000 of them were in the village of Kibeho, including one of the young people to whom the Blessed Mother appeared. Read how Missionary Childhood is promoting healing and justice by supporting “Peace Training” for children. Older students may be encouraged to read the book Left to Tell – Discovering God in the Rwandan Holocaust by Imaculée Ilibagiza.
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MCA in Senegal
Siter Rosalind writes of her ability to spread the Joy of Jesus because of her partnership with the Missionary Childhood Association. Her work is with little ones in a day care as well as mother/baby care – helping new mothers learn to care for their newborns.
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MCA in Dundee, South Africa
The Missionary Childhood Association is hard at work in Dundee, South Africa. Learn how our members are helping to provide basic infrastructure in schools, churches and clinics, some of which have access to running water, electricity, or improved sanitation, but often enough, not all three.
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MCA in Sasolburg, South Africa
Missionary Childhood Association is helping to support Church schools, clinics, and orphanages in Sasolburg. We’ve been doing this work since long before one of our more famous National Directors, Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, visited the area. Read more about the work of Missionary Childhood in Sasolburg and pray for the children there on the green beads of the World Mission Rosary that Archbishop Sheen created!
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MCA in South Sudan
Even in the worst of situations like the civil war in South Sudan, the Missionary Childhood Association is there, working to help keep the hope of Christ alive. Children gather under a tree outside an abandoned thread factory for faith formation class; the factory itself serves as the makeshift church. We continue to support the rebuilding of the Church in places were the need is so great.
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MCA in Tanzania
With support from the Missionary Childhood Association, the Sisters of Saint Charles Borromeo run a Health Center in a rural area of Tanzania. Many children there suffer from marasmus, a severe malnutrition that stunts the growth of children. The Sisters provide medical and nutritional care as well as help for new mothers so that babies get a healthy start. Read about the other good works of the Sisters that are supported by MCA members worldwide!
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MCA in Jinja, Uganda
There is nothing like some healthy competition to motivate children, even if they live an ocean apart! Read how MCA members in Plymouth, Massachusetts were inspired to have a lemonade stand to benefit the missions by a visitor from Jinja, Uganda to their Faith Formation program. That visitor, Father Alex, was also the MCA Director for his home diocese and took the story back to his MCA members who were then motivated to do the same. Are your students up to the challenge to Pay It Forward with MCA?
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MCA in Kabale, Uganda
In the Diocese of Kabale, Uganda, learn how the Missionary Childhood Association is helping children learn to be self-sufficient. At the Saint Maria Goretti Boarding School, children are responsible for the maintenance and cleaning of their crowded dormitories and bathrooms. Even the youngest are taught to do their own laundry! Life skills are all a part of MCA’s work to support the growth of children.
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MCA in Tororo Uganda
A motto of Saint Maria Goretti School in the Archdiocese of Tororo, Uganda is “When you educate a girl-child, you educate a nation.” Learn how Missionary Childhood is helping to form the next generation of women leaders in Uganda!
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MCA and Education in Zambia
Most schools in Zambia are run by the government and families must pay fees for uniforms and books. Many cannot afford them, and their children remain uneducated. Private schools run by the Catholic Church are now becoming more common and are considered educationally superior. Students learn math, reading, and personal hygiene – for some, it is their first experience with a toothbrush! These schools are free, thanks to help from the Missionary Childhood Association.
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MCA Christmas in Zimbabwe
Children in the country of Zimbabwe are receive regular help from Missionary Childhood; they offer it to their brothers and sisters as well! Amidst a minority Catholic population in the country, MCA supports Sisters who teach children who are differently abled and orphaned. They are also teaching generosity to other students. Read about the Christmas gifts made possible by Zimbabwean MCA members for the Sisters’ students!