We’ve  finally made it!

We left St Joseph & Benildus Church 25 days ago, on Wed 17th February (Ash Wednesday), walked past St Mary’s Ballygunner, across Great Britain, right across Europe, through Istanbul and down through North Africa. We have now arrived in our partner parish of The Good Shepherd in Ishiara, Embu Country, Kenya. Below is a short video of some of our partners in Ishiara Parish completing the final 10km walk to celebrate our virtual arrival at The Church of the Good Shepherd in Ishiara.

In 2019, our partnership raised funds to buy materials for local people to construct the Kamavaru Sand Dam. This was completed in early 2020, just before Covid-19 broke out and can be seen in operation at  HERE  

We were also able to fund the kitting-out of two computer labs, one in St Teresa Fasce Primary School and one in St Timothy’s Secondary School. The final commissioning was only completed in the last few weeks due to Covid-19 restrictions and the kids have just now started classes. Short video of the children enjoying the new computer room can be seen below:

With the funds raised from our Virtual Camino, we hope to assist at least 20 families in more remote areas to build their own “water-pans” to harvest rainwater from their corrugated roofs, that they can then use to irrigate plants and water livestock. More information on the water pans project can be seen HERE

We also expect to assist another school in providing either a computer lab or other educational facilities, based on feedback from the local community.

As part of our 12noon Mass on Sun 14th March, Fr Liam Power (P.P.) placed some stones brought from the site of the Kamavaru Sand Dam into the Lenten Garden display. The Lenten Garden compares the life-giving properties of water, with the eternal life-giving properties of Faith, Hope & Charity. You can see it on our Youtube recording, immediately after the Communion reflection (~44mins).

We have reached the  final day of recording our kms. However, participants may log their kms walked, ran or cycled up to Sunday 14th 9pm. To allow for consolidation of results, especially from schools, you may make your submission up to 6.00pm on Tuesday 16th. We will keep the GoFundMe page open until next weekend so you have a chance to boast to any interested “sponsors” about your achievement in completing the Virtual Camino to Ishiara and maybe encourage them to contribute. Pass the word onto your friends, they can read about it all here: https://jbmparish.com/waterford-to-ishiara-virtual-camino

Well done to everyone involved – this has been a tremendous success and a great achievement for our parish community in St .Joseph & St Benildus. Thank You to everyone that has participated in the Camino and Contributed to the GoFundMe page – a reminder  GoFundMe page remains open until at least this coming week-end (20th /21st March) if anyone else feels like contributing!!! Also, a big thanks to the IPPC Committee for all the hard work in making this such a successful event – the date €8,600 to date has been raised – Thank you for the tremendous support! This will enable us to: