Joy is what define us when we opened, this Sunday (8) the 29th Fraternity without Borders Community Centre in Mozambique (32nd in total), at 7th April village (named after Mozambican women day), in Guija. There we have started daily support to around 900 vulnerable children. The center was built thanks to the union of many caravan volunteers who had been in Mozambique for the humanitarian mission in February this year.

“The group would go on trips to assist one of the seven selected areas, where Fraternity without Borders maintain Community Centres. On one of these trips, at the halfway point, our coordinator, Andrei Moreira, saw by the roadside a boy who was playing with other children and running towards our bus. He stood out because one of his eyes was swollen, due to a tumor. We were far from the local where the assistance was going to take place that day, so that boy would not be assisted but for Andrei’s sensitivity, who immediately requested to stop the bus to take a closer look at the problem. The child fled to the bushes, and the doctors followed him. Minutes later, the surprise: along with the doctor and the child, many others returned. All of them in extreme poverty condition. Children in a precarious situation, sick, some of them severely, all of them in need of water, food. Without knowing, the little boy, who was diagnosed by the team doctors with a severe tumor, was the connection to the discovery of a community “invisible” until then, unknown and with no support”, the message is part of the report from caravan volunteers when they launched the fundraising campaign to build the 7th April.

In order to build this new community center, a raffle was organized and sold by the caravan volunteers. The 7th of April is going to be maintained by sponsors, through funds collected by “Shelter Mozambique”, like the other projects. The opening was attended by local leaders and elders and counted on an unexpected theatre performed by the children, about early wedding and pregnancy and calling the young for studies and self-appreciation, for a better future.

At the opening schedule, there was also music presentations, medical assistance, clothes distribution, and a traditional community lunch. Everything went marvelously in a spirit of mutual respect, solidarity and fraternity and our heart could not be happier and more fulfilled.