School spirit
Local women’s group inspired to help school in Africa
Arusha, Tanzania, is half a world away in East Africa, but it now has a connection to Baton Rouge through a group of women who meet every Tuesday morning at The Red Shoes, a local center for spiritual and personal growth.
Their interest started with a child whose mother grew up in Baton Rouge.
Eloise Bridgers lives in Sydney, Australia, with her parents, James and Jeanne Fenasci Bridgers, and her two brothers, Teddy, 15, and Henry, 9. Her father works for a company that does business analysis.
Eloise, who is 13, was 10 when she heard Gemma Sisia speak at St. Mary Magdalene Church in Sydney. Sisia, a native of Australia, founded the School of St. Jude in Arusha and had gone home to raise money for the school. The school educates children who are very bright and highly motivated but are also very poor.
Eloise was so touched by Sisia’s presentation that she decided to bake cookies every weekend for a semester and sell them at Kincoppal, the Sacred Heart school she attends.
“Eloise’s mother was a bit discouraging, thinking that it was too big a project for Eloise,” said Betty Armstrong Fenasci, Eloise’s stepgrandmother.
But Eloise proved her mother wrong.
Every weekend for the whole semester, Eloise made cookies and sold them during the week for $1 each. She ended up making $1,500 for St. Jude. Her father matched the amount.
“Then another person matched the new sum, and so forth, until pretty soon, the church raised a total of $24,000 for the school,” Betty Fenasci said.
In October 2010, the Bridgerses and the Fenascis traveled to Africa to see the school and a classroom dedicated to Eloise in appreciation for her generosity.
The travelers spent three days living at St. Jude. “We were very impressed with the children, the facility itself and the staff,” Betty Fenasci said. “Everyone on the staff except for the local teachers is a volunteer.”
During their days there, Eloise and her family got to see the rigorous selection process to be accepted at the school. As many as 400 to 500 children wait at the gates to begin the testing process, which takes the better part of every Friday from September to December. Only one child in a family is permitted to attend. It is a huge honor for the family and the community for a child to be chosen.
“It’s hard to imagine how hopeful these little children look as they face the possibility of escaping poverty,” Betty Fenasci said. The school’s motto is “Fighting Poverty Through Education.”
During their visit, the group made home visits to several families with gifts of rice, beans, mosquito netting and cloth. They rode one of the school’s 20 buses to pick up the day students and teachers “through the deeply rutted, mostly unpaved streets of Arusha,” Betty Fenasci said.
From the fourth grade on, the children board at the school. “That provides them with three nourishing meals a day, not just at noon like the day students,” she said.
When the Fenascis returned to Baton Rouge, they told everyone they could about the school to encourage people to donate money for scholarships or to give any amount to help. Students do not pay to attend St. Jude, which runs totally on donations and grants, most of which come from Australia, the United States and Ireland.
“One family in Kentucky gave $9 million for a new campus,” Betty Fenasci said.
University Presbyterian Church gave money from its mission budget, and members of Our Lady of Mercy have also contributed.
Betty Fenasci brought her enthusiasm for the school to the Tuesday Morning Group, her Red Shoes group of 12 women.
“When she told us, it touched our hearts,” said Pat Godfrey, a Tuesday Morning member.
One of the major focuses of the Tuesday Morning Group is to take a book and “study it for our own personal responses, what it tells us about life and the world,” Godfrey said.
Recently the group has had a strong interest in Africa. “We were never taught about the African culture, the country, the hardships the people endured, the tribal battles, the extreme brutality, the lack of opportunity,” she said.
From this interest, the Tuesday Morning Group decided to sponsor a child at St. Jude. Sponsorships are about $1,500 per child per year. “They like for you to have a three-year commitment to see that the child gets a predictable start,” Betty Fenasci said.
The Tuesday Morning Group “adopted” 8-year-old Frank Samwel Mbwambo, whose family lives in a rented one-room, cement-block home. To support the family, Frank’s father buys bread and sells it on the street from his bicycle. His mother works at the local fabric manufacturer.
The school regularly sends information on Frank. After each term, it provides a progress report.
One of the benefits of the school is the spill-over effect of having one educated person in a family. It is Sisia’s hope that these educated children will stay and change Tanzania.
Godfrey compares the work of the School of St. Jude to the purplish blue gemstone tanzanite, which is found in that area of Africa.
“Tanzanite was not that valuable just a few years ago, but it has gained in value recently,” Godfrey said. “I see these children as a metaphor. They will add to the structure, to the culture and to the quality of life in their home, in their area.”