Imagine the children, orphans of war, often living in the street or with members of their extended families, because their parents are dead. Most live in poverty, begging in the streets, without attending school. They are potential prey for criminals. Children of various ethnic and religious backgrounds, desperate for material and emotional support, are in need of healing, physically, mentally and spiritually. Mountain and winter emergency deliveries on difficult and dangerous paths are demanding and risky. One new 4x4, all-terrain vehicle is urgently needed now to transport relief packs in winter. Matthew Procter, a volunteer of Mary Mother of Peace since June 2000 who adopted two war orphans, is running MMP-MC field office in Mostar and the medical assistance and reconstructive surgery program of the Charity. This program is implemented in cooperation with physicians and hospitals in the US and Europe.

Mostar: Orphans Andrijan and Amel, now young men and part-time volunteers, with Matthew...and other volunteers

Giving Back to War Orphans and the Poor

Donors are partners who can help us with loving support and healing effort to relieve poverty and bring hope to war orphans, street children, and their surviving families. In addition to money to buy basic necessities (food, clothing, shoes, school kits, health kits, blankets), your generosity will also help:

Build and equip houses where people who have lost their homes can live;

Develop a peaceful environment where returning refugees of all faiths can breed livestock, cultivate their land, learn farming and gardening skills, drive a truck and earn a living again;

Build or repair and equip schools for boys and girls open to all to learn basic skills such as to read, to write, mathematics, science, informatics, arts, humanities, English;

Provide equipment and materials for dispensaries and clinics at selected orphanages for medical and dental care.

The Needs:

Fund raising is now a key priority. Donations are tax deductible. Click How to Help? if you wish to send a check, make a bank transfer or provide time and talents, to help with our mission, emergency relief program or specific project. Thank you. Soon, you will also be able to make a gift online on a secure area. More than 90% of MMP-MC proceeds go to final beneficiaries.

Visibility is important. We need volunteers and members of our Advisory Board, who are willing to open doors for us and help create additional public exposure for Mary Mother of Peace, and our work. Among others, a former US Ambassador, a physician, the president of a corporation, an airlines Captain, a CPA, a corporate executive in the music industry, and a renowned author have joined the Advisory Board and are helping us.

Project implementation. To build the homes, develop local skills, and ensure project sustainability over time, we need people with expertise, time and talents. Thanks to dedicated volunteers John and Carl, MMP-MC shipped and installed in 2004 a dental laboratory to the clinic of Mothers’ Village orphanage in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Psychological services to victims of war who are suffering from Post Trauma Syndrome Disorder (PSTD) require qualified individuals for St Michael House in Bosnia and Herzegovina. We need help and money to build drinking water wells in drought areas in Central India, and provide emergency relief and reconstruction assistance for tsunami victims in Southern India; to care for abandoned children with AIDS and help poor children to go to school in devastated Haiti; to alleviate poverty, improve health conditions, protect children in a poor mountain area of Mexico and help poor families earn an honest living where they live.

Claudine at destroyed school and convent of Bijelo Polje with Sr. Zdravka and war orphans

Matthew helping needy children in Bosnia

Testimonies

Balkans. A young American volunteer, Jim, after visiting a refugee camp in the Balkans has this to say: “ You can easily see the misery and hardships that many of the refugees face. It makes one thankful to God that you are blessed with so many beautiful things like food, water, shelter, health and education.”

India. A 25-year old French girl, university graduate, Pier-Laurence, spent one year in India in 2001-2002 as an unpaid volunteer helping distressed children to eat and go to school and poor widows to improve their life, while she was teaching French and English to wealthier people to earn a living. Here is what she wrote one day from Kochi: “Street children welcome me with open arms. They fled their homes because their parents are too poor to feed them. Most of them, age 10 to 16, come from North India and they learned the Malayalam language in the street where they spent enough time to have taken drugs, to prostitute themselves, then to forget everything and continue to eat around piles of trash”.

Afghanistan. Mary Mother of Peace-MC worked in partnership with the Franciscans to help the refugees in Afghanistan during and after the war against terror. After a horrendous winter claiming numerous lives in refugee camps, in April 2002 one of them wrote:

"We visited many refugee camps. We met families and inquired about their means of livelihood and gave away food and medicine. Some are trying to settle in Pakistan. Some have private businesses, but there are many, maybe in the thousands, who are just at the mercy of NGOs and other donors. They live in misery: no sufficient food, no medical facilities, no clean water to drink, no electricity, and no toilet rooms. Keeping in mind the difficulties Pakistan faces and what also the refugees go through, the Government is trying to send refugees back to their own country, Afghanistan. On April 8 the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, UNHCR opened the Voluntary Repatriation Center (VRC) in Quetta. They said that every day more than 50 families would go back to Afghanistan voluntarily. They have nothing, and UNHCR suggested we provide food for these families. We promised to provide food for a week for each returning family. This we did. We were very happy to help them. The UNHCR staff was very helpful and cooperative. It involved sacrifice and hard labor. Each day we had to prepare 50 bags of food. This we did in the evening before, and the next morning we went to the VRC at Baleli, 15 km [10 miles] outside Quetta. We handed a bag of food to the head of each family. It was pleasant to see the joy and excitement of the refugees who were going back to their motherland. From the top of trucks, children and young people were singing in their own language. I was thinking of Afghanistan. At this moment there are no houses. Cities are destroyed. There is no security of life. But still refugees are happy to go back to their liberated land..."

USA. A handicapped high school graduate living on a wheelchair, George, was offered a fully paid one-week vacation to Universal Studios in Orlando, Florida, with a paramedic couple taking care of him on a daily basis. George, who is now in college and doing well, wrote a letter saying, “This was the best trip of my life”.

Be a super hero!

We are launching a new project to restore health and well-being to wounded and disabled service people in cooperation with US military hospitals: the program is called Little Flower Project. By connecting wounded veterans directly with war orphans in Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq, “Little Flower” will aim to mutually rebuild lives.

"THE ONE WHO PRAYS IS NOT AFRAID OF THE FUTURE AND HAS NO HATE IN HIS/HER HEART"