Ashes to Easter boxes help missionaries throughout the world

By Enedelia J. Obregón | Senior Correspondent

During Lent parishes across the diocese will once again participate in the Ashes to Easter Campaign. For many years, families and individuals have participated in the campaign by dropping their change into little boxes during Lent thus supporting missionary activities throughout the world.
The proceeds from the 2020 Ashes to Easter campaign benefit three area nonprofits and will help them continue their mission work. Educate Haiti Inc., Weavers of Hope and New Hope for Cambodian Children will share in the funds raised through last year’s campaign.
DeKarlos Blackmon, secretariat director of Life, Charity and Justice for the Diocese of Austin, said the three groups will share the approximate $30,000 that was raised.
Blackmon said the Mission Advisory Council recommends to the bishop who should receive those funds and then Bishop Joe Vásquez chooses the recipients. The council is comprised of community members, ordained clergy and pastoral staff.
Educate Haiti
Educate Haiti was started by Kathy and Don Pomeroy nine years ago while they were living in Indiana. The couple now lives in San Marcos and are parishioners at St. Anthony Marie de Claret Parish in Kyle.
Kathy said the nonprofit supports 500 children in a school near Durissy, a community in a mountainous area where most are illiterate, the average family income is $100 a year, and dirt floors are common.
Since starting the nonprofit, four of those students are now attending university. One of the students is in nursing school and wants to return to be a nurse/midwife.
“There are so many needs,” she said. “We decided to pick one.”
They were encouraged to choose education by Father Yves Anis, the pastor who serves the area.
“He is convinced that with education, in two generations they will help change the country,” Kathy said.
Through grants, the nonprofit has managed to “bring the school from the 19th to the 21st century,” she said. Teachers were supposed to earn $125 a month but didn’t always get paid. The group now makes sure they get paid.
Four children at a time were sharing a single textbook. Now each child has a textbook. It costs between $12,000 and $15,000 to purchase books each year. They have also opened a preschool for 4-year-olds.
Teachers now have the opportunity to travel to Port-au-Prince, the country’s capital, to take computer classes, get educated and receive their certification.
The school’s five buildings now have electricity, and newly-installed ceiling fans combat the heat and humidity.
Kathy said the generosity of other charitable foundations has greatly benefited the village. In partnership with Charitable Foundation of the Energy Bar Association (CFEBA) and Twende Solar Foundation of Portland, Oregon, the volunteers installed solar panels on the buildings for electricity. They also taught locals how to maintain and repair the system.
For information about Educate Haiti visit www.educatehaiti.net.
Weavers of Hope
Jack Kern started Weavers of Hope 18 years ago after participating in an intensive 30-week program on social justice issues called JustFaith at St. Thomas More Parish in Austin. He and his wife, Martha, are now parishioners at St. Ignatius Martyr in Austin.
The JustFaith participants traveled to Villa García in the Mexican state of Zacatecas as part of the program. They met Sister Fran Smith, who has been living there since 1998.
The focus has always been on education because that’s what families deemed most important, Jack said.
“We would go to weekend Masses and attract sponsors for the students,” he said. Fundraising helps expand the program and finance the grants made to the students when sponsors drop out. A little more than 70 students were being helped at last count, and 60% of the money goes to help students in university. The grants also help students at the elementary, middle school and high school levels.
So far, they have helped educate 250 students. Among them are a middle school math teacher, a doctor in a public health clinic and a dentist.
The name for the nonprofit came from Villa García, which is historically a village of weavers.
“On a trip there we saw hundreds of empty weaving looms,” Jack said. “The village had a weaving tradition for hundreds of years.”
Mass-produced products from other countries had forced many of the weavers to work in factories for little pay, so the group started a fair trade project with the local weavers and gained a name. The nonprofit buys the hand-made rugs and blankets at a fair price and sells them to U.S. buyers, and the profits go into the educational program.
Sales of the woven products raise a small percentage of the funding, with the bulk coming from sponsors. That also helps pay the salary of the nonprofit’s single employee in Villa García who keeps track of finances and payments at the school. A parents’ committee identifies students who need help and ensures that those in school maintain high GPAs and write letters to their sponsors.
Jack said Weavers of Hope has had a ripple effect. Three years ago, Sister Fran visited Austin, and he took her to the St. Vincent de Paul Society in Lago Vista, which had been looking for a twinning opportunity in Mexico.
Sister Fran took the idea back to Villa García, which now has two St. Vincent de Paul conferences.
For more information about Weavers of Hope, visit www.weaversofhope.com.
New Hope
John and Kathy Tucker, lay missionaries from St. Paul Chong Hasang Parish in Harker Heights, founded New Hope for Cambodian Children in 2006. They first went to Cambodia –– where they live most of the time –– in 2000 with the Maryknoll organization to provide assistance to adults dying of AIDS. They soon realized that many children left behind with no one to care for them were infected with HIV. They found and directed the Little Sprouts program through Maryknoll to provide medications to suppress the HIV virus.
They began New Hope in 2006 to expand assistance to the thousands of Cambodian children living with HIV/AIDS.
They also care for orphans and abandoned children in a residential complex outside Phnom Penh. They support 45 students attending university or vocational school through the New Hope Houses program.
“New Hope House provides a safe and secure residence where our children can live while they attend university or vocational training in the capital, Phnom Penh. In the last year we have had 17 students living at New Hope House and 10 students living in a separate rented facility in Phnom Penh,” John Tucker said.
The facilities include a medical clinic, an International school, and eight residential care facilities. Since 2006, more than 2,000 children have been provided home-based care and more than 300 orphans and abandoned children have been provided residential care.
For more information about New Hope for Cambodian Children, visit www.newhopeforcambodianchildren.org.
Ashes to Easter
Father Tom Frank, a retired priest who lives at St. John Paul II Residence for Priests in Georgetown, said Ashes to Easter got its start in the mid-1980s and was designed after a similar program funded by the Diocesan Council of Catholic Women.
While he was pastor at Santa Teresa Parish in Bryan, he was able to get four nearby parishes to participate the first year.
“I remember Mrs. Rocha and her son, Jose Rocha, wrapping aluminum soft drink cans with paper,” he said. They raised $5,000 that year.
The next year, 12 parishes participated and collected $7,000.
In 1987 when he was transferred to St. Elizabeth Parish in Pflugerville, then Bishop John McCarthy asked him to expand it. About 70 parishes raised $40,000. That’s when they began using the small cardboard boxes.
“Bob Thomas of Thomas Graphics in Pflugerville offered to print the boxes,” Father Frank said. Bob Richburg in Austin designed the boxes.
The number of participating parishes grew and three years later the project was diocesan-wide.
Father Frank said he misses going out to all the parishes in the diocese to deliver the boxes.
He has fond memories of driving to Brenham and LaGrange to deliver boxes. As he made deliveries, he would often stop for lunch with his priest friends.
When he was transferred to San José Parish in Austin in 2002, the parish secretary Tina Esquivel started maintaining meticulous records of every box delivered and received.
“I don’t remember where I got the idea for the name,” he said. “But it’s helped a lot of folks.”
He figures the campaign has raised between $2.5 million and $3 million through the years. Some years, the annual campaign has raised $100,000.
“The boxes can have as little as $2 in coins,” he said. “But a little bit from a lot of folks adds up.”
For information about Ashes to Easter, visit www.austindiocese.org/ashes-to-easter.