English translation:
My name is Sylvia, and I am a Passionist Sister living in Argentina in a very poor village about 70 km from the Capital, called Campana. This is the 4th year that we are living there as a community of Passionist sisters.
Our strongest work is with the young people of the village who are at risk and who don’t have much ability to complete their schooling. So we accompany them and help them finish their primary and secondary schooling, as we believe that the way out of poverty is through education. In the tutoring we give them after they finish school we teach them skills, computing, as well as do things that are recreational with them, and here they experience that they are loved. In their families they often live without love.
At the present time we work with a project of housing of self-construction of houses with 8 families. The village is very poor so the houses too are very poor, and made of wood. So what we do is get together with the families and construct these dwellings together. It is a very rich experience for us and gives us much joy to be able to share this journey with the people and see them growing in dignity. We begin by getting together with 4 families, then we have get-togethers with the men who up till now live off fruit picking or packing boxes, and we teach them masonry to give them the opportunity to make a living out of this and so get out of the fruit picking or packing boxes.
Alongside of this we also have get-togethers with the women and we treat of certain distinct themes such as: what it means to be a woman; their role in the family; accompanying the children and helping them grow; and we also have a distinct way of doing this awakening certain themes and illuminating them with the Word the Gospel of Jesus.
We also form part of a Diocesan Team who minister to the jails, as many of our young people are prisoners. Once a week I go to the jail with a Diocesan Pastoral group and my task is to be with these prisoners and also to visit their families and to accompany the family so that when these young people are released they can be welcomed back and helped not to fall back into crime and back into jail.
One of the sisters also has a group of teenagers she meets with on Saturdays where they get together in the chapel and we accompany them in their search for their vocation and discerning Gods call which is concretized in distinct ways. We also help to bolster their identity as Christians.
That’s about it.
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