by Nadia Ramoutar      MMM Communications Coordinator    Ireland     04.09.2022

When I was a little girl, I loved back to school time. I think it may be my obsession with new pens and paper that was at the heart of it. Perhaps it was the chaos of my homelife that made me love school so much. I don’t know exactly why but although I always hated for summer to end, I was always delighted to get back to school. I was a fortunate child who had great school friends (I still have the same friends I did then!) and lovely teachers. I loved to learn and I still do.

If makes my heart heavy to think how many little girls are denied the joys of learning. As I do more and more global health work, I learn about the plights of half the children in the world because of gender – girls have much less chance of being educated, setting them up for a much harder life. It’s hard for many of us to imagine that families facing poverty or hardship often do not let girls go to school because they are needed to fetch water or do domestic tasks. I am so grateful that our MMM Sisters and Associates work to regenerate water and set up sanitation programmes that make it possible for girls to go to school.

Our MMM Sisters not only treat the person who is sick or challenged, but the family. We see so many succ

elp families feed themselves and help single mothers support their families. We, in the Western world, often take for granted that opportunities need to be fair and equal. Most of the world is not operating on this premise.

So, as we see all the “Back to School” hype in August and September, let’s take a moment to think of a little girl somewhere wishing she could go to school and dreaming of learning. I will continue to work for that little girl I may never meet. When we help a family, we prepare the next generation for what’s to come. Educating a girl means a future family will benefit and so will the whole village or community.

MMMs place a huge emphasis on education. Our Founder Mother Mary knew 85 years ago the importance of educating the Sisters. Since then hundreds of girls have grown to become not only Sisters but doctors, nurses, midwives, therapists and other health related professionals. The rest is history as they say.