What is VLM?

The Vincentian Lay Missionaries is an organization founded in 2005 by the Daughters of Charity. Our mission is to enmesh lay young adults in the ministry and service of St. Vincent de Paul by partnering with the global Vincentian Family - the Congregation of the Mission and the Daughters of Charity. Vincentians believe in creating lasting systemic change, living in solidarity with the people they serve, and promoting peace and dignity for all peoples.

Check it out!

Welcome to my blog! My explanation for writing this starts with my very first post: The Journey Begins, Part 1.

Thursday, April 7, 2011

So, Where IS This Place Anyway?

I have yet to actually write anything about Kitale, the city where we will be living and working this summer!

For those of you interested in facts and statistics, here's a quick overview of the city:

Languages: (Official) Swahili and English (Local Province) Bukusu dialect, Keiyo, Kipsigis, Kiswahili, Maasai, Markweeta, Nandi, Okiek, Omotik, Sabaot, Terik, and Turkana
Population: Urban is estimated at 220,000
Main Industry: Agriculture
Location: The Rift Valley Province (near Kenya's Western border with Uganda)

Simply Googling Kitale will provide you with a map, Wikipedia article, a few blogs, and tourist information. It is a city surrounded by a rural area, where the main crops are sunflower, tea, coffee, seed beans, seed maize, and Pyrethrum (flowers in the Chrysanthemum family).

Our ministry will be with the street children - providing them a safe and educational place to be during the school holiday. We will be working with about 150 children per weekly camp, ages 5-14. Instead of hosting one-month long camp as VLM has done in the past, the Kitale site will host three 1-week camps, allowing us to serve a total of 450 children during our stay!

We're now in the preliminary stages of planning our daily agendas for the camp! It is an exciting time for the coordinators and the volunteers, as we examine the supplies and skill sets available for each site in Kenya. There will be 11 of us, working in 3 different cities. In Kitale, there will be three adventurous college students in addition to myself. Please pray for us during this planning process! Of course, as with any volunteering plan, everything is subject to change - and we know not the day nor the hour!

As we enter into this 5th weekend of Lent, the last week of Lent before Holy Week begins, I pray for all of us preparing our hearts and minds for the physical journey we will undertake this summer. Please continue to pray for all of the volunteers, coordinators, directors, our Daughter of Charity hostesses in Kenya and Ethiopia, and the people we will serve.
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