On Sunday 9th January this year the Parish was visited by Sara Smith-Pearse from CAFOD.  She came on invitation from Anita our CAFOD Parish representative after the young people within the Childrens Liturgy selected El Salvador as the country for our CAFOD donation, Sara was invited to speak at Mass and held a short film presentation on Puentecitos, a village on the edge of El Salvador. The children of the Parish had displayed some of their research on that country around the hall. The presentation was well attended and we agreed afterwards that as a Parish we would create our own DVD to show the young people of that village who we were. It always makes a difference when we in the 1st world can put names to faces and see the people who we are trying to help. For young people this is particularly important.
We completed a short DVD on 1st February and sent it off to Sara in time for her visit to El Salvador on 18th February. Sara was pleased with our first attempt but we will do better in future. The people of Puentecitos will be able to access our Parish website. Hopefully when she returns she will bring something similar back with her.
On 15 February Fr Rory and David Law went to St Richards Catholic Secondary and met with the young people who come from the Parish area of Halisham and Polegate. The School Chaplain Angela Brennan kindly arranged a buffet lunch and we were able to show the film of Puenticitos to the group and we requested that thought be given to forming a CAFOD sub comittee at the school  to help with fund raising. We also highlighted the Parish website on screen and will make sure the website is displayed within the school. At the lunch we stated our intention to run another ‘bring and share’ event at the Parish hall for any young people from the Parish or the School who wish to attend. Hopefully over the coming year the young people will be able to develop relationships with other young people in this part of the world and gain an appreciation of our fundemental Christian duty to love our neighbours (who often live far away).