Catholic church establishes centre for the poor

The Catholic Church, with its vision of reaching out to the poor, has established a project christened, the “Business and Faith Developing Centre” to cater for the social needs of the less privileged.

As an interface between academia and faith, the project seeks to develop the spirit of voluntarism among students, thereby instilling in them the desire of serving the poor after their completion of school.

Archbishop Charles Gabriel Palmer-Buckle, Chancellor of the Catholic Institute of Business and Technology (CIBT), announced this, on Friday, at a congregation of the Institute, at which 112 students graduated to in Degree programmes, while 25 students graduated in Masters in programmes.

Archbishop Palmer-Buckle said the pro poor project, began in Sodom and Gomorra, a suburb of Accra, with about 150,000 people, camped in one place of about two square miles.

“Biblically Sodom and Gomorra was a place, which was destroyed by fire due to the immoral activities that went on there, but upon introducing our project Ghana’s Sodom and Gomorra, it has been baptized as the City of God,” he said.

In the present day, he said, the community is known to be a place of poor sanitation, with no water, poor lighting system, no schools, no clinics for health care and no accessible roads to the place.

“But, as a city of God, we must help build a place where there would be peace, happiness and development and where every child born there would have a future outlined for him or her,” he stated.

Archbishop Palmer-Buckle said about five projects had begun there: clinic for health and sanitation; adult literacy programmes and school for children; fire service training and training programmes for other emergencies; skills training; and peace building to build their capacities.

“It is my dream that the students of CIBT would be imbued with a sense of fellow-feeling to extend a helping hand to their fellow humans, and that of helping academia to find solutions to these challenges,” he said.

He said the Institute would introduce voluntarism as academic discipline so that when students graduate they would not only seek to become entrepreneurs but also to have the spirit of helping people raise their standards of living.

He said for lack of financial aid and assistance from the well endowed people in society, the talents of the children in Sodom and Gomorra were wasting away and should this continue, Ghana would lose great talents.

The Catholic Church is the second provider of schools in the country, he said, and had decided to continue aiding the country by being on the lookout for people who could help to educate the children in need of education.

“A wide search into the educational system of the country would prove the existence of Catholic schools in the remote areas, which makes it natural for the Church to establish a project, such as this one, to help educate not only the children but adults also,” he said.

Archbishop Palmer-Buckle said the Catholic Institution had contributed numerically to the strength produced in the public domain, and had sought to tackle the corruption and indiscipline in the society in order to produce quality, moral and ethical leadership.