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Ministries Foundation links sponsors with children,
elders in distant lands
By DAWN GIBEAU
Where missionaries venture, ministry comes in many flavors,
tailored to people's needs, conditioned by climate and culture. Perhaps less
obviously, the missionaries' presence is stamped with characteristics of their
sponsoring mission organization, sometimes a diocese, frequently a religious
order with its individual charism.
A distinctive ministry to missions originated in the Kansas City
area in the 1970s. The Christian Foundation for Children and Aging was founded
by lay people and developed characteristics different from other missionary
groups, yet complementing and supporting their activities.
This year the foundation is expected to bring in about $19.5
million, said Ed Stankard, director of marketing. Last year's total was $15.1
million, of which 87.7 percent was spent on program services and 12.3 percent
on fundraising and administration. CFCA facilitates sponsorship of almost
80,000 children and elderly people in a hundred mission projects and a thousand
subprojects in 23 nations. Sponsors provide $20 a month to assist the person
they sponsor.
CFCA does not operate its own projects but funnels the money into
existing ones -- a mission parish, for instance, or an educational or
agricultural project run by lay people. Catholics operate almost all the
projects. An exception is the Umrao Singh Memorial School, operated by Hindu
adults to educate almost 700 Hindu children in Allahabad, India. The foundation
never dictates how a project should spend sponsorship money, only that it
benefit the sponsored individuals and not be saved up, for example to construct
a building. CFCA monitors how the money is spent by inspecting reports from
project personnel.
The organization began in 1981 at the instigation of two laymen,
Robert Hentzen, who had served as a Christian Brother in Colombia and
Guatemala, and Jerry Tolle, once a Jesuit missionary in Honduras. Their passion
for the poor -- the two had met in Latin America -- burned within them until
they, along with Hentzen's brothers, Bernard (Bud) and Jim, decided to start a
sponsorship organization. Bob Hentzen is president of CFCA, and Bud is chairman
of its board of directors.
The men grabbed their Christmas card mailing lists and wrote "to
our friends, relations or enemies, whatever they happened to be, and said,
'We're starting this, and you need to sit down and write a check so we can
deliver benefits,' " Bud told NCR. The start was small and the organization
struggled its first 10 years, he said, until a cadre of some 50 priests was
formed to speak in parishes throughout the country, soliciting sponsors.
"At the end of last year, we had appeared in about 1,900
parishes," Bud said. There are about 19,000 U.S. parishes, "so we have a ways
to go." But they are being invited back after about three years. "The parish
priest says, 'Hey, that was good for my people. Would you consider coming
again?' "
CFCA also advertises in the Catholic press to obtain sponsors, who
correspond with the person they sponsor and receive photos of him or her. From
time to time, CFCA conducts trips for sponsors to visit projects and meet the
child or older adult they sponsor. "That is an experience of a lifetime," Bud
Hentzen said.
"We feel sponsorship is a proper ministry for lay people,
especially Catholic lay people," he said, "because we have sat there in the pew
all our lives, and we want to be part of the solution to poverty."
The call of the poor has become so strong for founder Bob Hentzen
that, with his wife, Cristina, and youngest son, Jacob, he settled in Guatemala
recently after a 4,000 mile, eight-month pilgrimage on foot. The pilgrimage
began in Kansas City, Kan., where CFCA has its headquarters with a 55-member
staff.
Over the years, CFCA has sent 300 to 400 volunteers, as many as 30
at a time, to work in projects in many parts of the world. Today, 18 volunteers
serve in Guatemala, Haiti, India, El Salvador, Mexico, the Philippines and
Guatemala. Unlike quite a few mission-sending organizations, CFCA does little
active recruitment of volunteers, said Molly Harkins, director of volunteers.
"Basically we have our name in publications" that list volunteer opportunities.
Potential volunteers contact her for more information.
Volunteering with CFCA differs from volunteering through many
other organizations, which require at least a two-year commitment in return for
which the organization financially supports the volunteer. Although some CFCA
volunteers stay in a foreign mission project many years, the minimum
requirement is one year, sometimes less in India, depending on visa
requirements. However, CFCA volunteers support themselves entirely.
"We set up a fund, an account, for them, and they have a code,"
Harkins said. "They find donors through their church, their school, various
church organizations, friends, families, whoever they can find." One hundred
percent of a volunteer's money goes into his or her account, which can pay for
airfare, health insurance, visas and monthly stipends doled out to them at a
rate the volunteer selects, "usually about $50 a month."
The official minimum age requirement for a CFCA volunteer is 21,
Harkins said, but exceptions are made. One volunteer just returned who was 19
when he left. "It kind of depends on their maturity, if they're ready to
serve," Harkins said. Another recently returned volunteer is 47.
Harkins said, "I just talked to a woman -- she and her husband
just retired -- and she wants to go for 20 years." Harkins recommended starting
with a shorter stint and then extending it.
Doctors and agricultural experts have been CFCA volunteers, but
the organization does not have an educational requirement. "An open mind and a
willingness to serve and a big heart are the major requirements," she said,
"because those are most important if you want to survive" in a country steeped
in poverty.
"We don't have a job description," Harkins said. Volunteers do
what projects need. "Our big thing is for volunteers to get there and say, 'How
can I help?' " That frequently means translating letters between sponsors and
sponsored individuals. It can mean agricultural education, medical and health
care, teaching English or building projects.
Tony Benevento, who serves in Quiche, Guatemala, reported, "When I
first got here, I felt a lot of excitement and yet at the same time I felt a
little overwhelmed. Each day has its dose of the unexpected, plans continually
change. Yet with a handful of patience and humor, things turn out well, and the
work begins to take shape."
Harkins, who herself has been a volunteer with a different
organization in Mexico, said she misses people there, "people who really cared
about you, who took time out of their day to be with you, and you do the same.
I think that's what is really important about the volunteer experience and what
most volunteers miss when they return. I'm dying to go back."
CFCA missionary activity has always been international, and over
the years sponsorship has grown to be international as well. A priest in Spain
asked CFCA "to give his people in his country the opportunity to be sponsors,"
Bud Hentzen said, and 200 people have taken that opportunity. Canadian sponsors
became so numerous that CFCA asked Canadian Catholics to start a parallel
organization. That offshoot, Christian Child Care International, based in
Spring Hill, Nova Scotia, now has 2,000 sponsors. At first, CFCA found children
for its Canadian counterpart to sponsor, but now the Canadians do that
themselves.
The benefit of CFCA's sponsorship and volunteering to someone who
is sponsored can be shoes or schoolbooks, medicine or a wheelchair, perhaps a
simple, one-room house. The gifts sponsored people give to sponsors and
volunteers may be greater.
"As Bob [Hentzen] would say, we need their faith life, we need
their willingness to extend themselves more than they need our money," Stankard
said.
National Catholic Reporter, January 24,
1997
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