Supporting our mission

Overview

The work of the Sisters of St Louis has been generously supported by donations to promote the sisters’ work among the poor and marginalised. Donors include:

The Association of the Friends of St Louis Missions in Ireland
The St Louis League and Les Dames de St Louis in the United States of America
The Friends of St Louis Association in Nigeria
Various Partner Funding Agencies
Individual and group support at local levels across the countries

Check out our galleries on the right to see some of our supporters, and how your donations make a difference to the local communities that we serve.

We greatly appreciate the commitment, self-sacrifice and hard work of our friends and benefactors. You and your intentions are remembered in our prayers. We also remember with gratitude our benefactors who are now deceased. May their souls rest in perfect peace.

In 2013 we established a mission in Ethiopia, which aims at women empowerment and providing quality lower primary education to the children of the Erob Area of the Tigray Region. If you are interested in supporting this new mission, we have set up a dedicated GoFundMe page, which you can visit to donate online. To donate online to our our work in other ministries and other countries, or remembering us in your will, please use the PayPal button on the top right hand side of this page. To donate by cheque, please contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. for more details. We are very grateful for your support and your intentions will be remembered in our prayers.

To read more about our ministries, please click on headings below:

Education of the poor and marginalised

There are scholarship schemes in many of our schools in California, Ghana and Nigeria to help students from poor families to pay their tuition and get books for their studies. Also a few of our schools are situated in rural areas or in minority communities to ensure that children from these communities have access to a good, standard of education. Such schools are located in Oku in Ghana, Ijio in western Nigeria, and some rural villages in northern Nigeria. Some of our St Louis schools also reach out to and help neighbouring schools that do not have the same access to facilities for education. An example of this is the ‘Bridge of Care’ initiative in Louisville Itele Nigeria, where the students and their parents donate towards a feeding programme for children in neighbouring primary schools. The ‘Ajosepo’ project of St Genevieve’s, Belfast, is another example of this partnership approach, where the children in our kindergarten school in Dawhan, Ethiopia benefit from a daily feeding programme sponsored by the project.

Women empowerment programmes

Our sisters in Ahoskie, North Carolina, are community volunteers to the non-English speaking population of Ahoksie, and they teach in the adult education programme there, enabling the participants to prepare for and avail of college education.

Crossroads, Inc. in Claremont, California, which was established in 1974, is a unique six-month residential program for women released from California state prisons, providing a supportive, safe space for women readjusting to life after prison, at no cost. At Crossroads, residents are treated as individuals and not ex-prisoners, where they are nurtured and their self-esteem built up.

The Sisters of St Louis are on the board of the South Central Los Angeles Ministry Project (SCLAMP), which focuses on high-risk women and children - mainly economically poor immigrants - offering them early childhood education, family literacy programs, ESL (English as a Second Language) classes, and workshops on parenting, nutrition and self-esteem.

The Mater Dei Centre, Akure, Nigeria, offers vocational training to young women in sewing, knitting, hairdressing, catering and hotel management, soap making, and computer literacy, to prepare them for employment and self-reliance.

Our sisters in Dawhan, Ethiopia, have set up a Women Empowerment Centre, where women learn embroidery and sewing. Some women also benefit from a micro finance scheme for sheep rearing.

Prevention of trafficking and rehabilitation of victims of trafficking

Some of our sisters work at Bakhita Villa, a safe house for victims of trafficking established by Patricia Ebegbulem SSL in Lagos, Nigeria. Sr. Patricia is the African coordinator of ANAHT (African Network Against Human Trafficking). The sisters in Bakhita Villa help to rescue and rehabilitate victims of human trafficking who receive counseling, take computer classes, and build skills they need for their new lives as part of their rehabilitation. The sisters also give workshops to schools and various organizations to raise awareness on the issue of trafficking.

Two of our sisters volunteer at the LifeWay Network Safe House in New York, which supports women survivors of human trafficking.

Health care

Our hospitals in Benin, Ghana and Nigeria are situated in rural areas and they focus on maternal and child welfare, as well as attending to other sick patients. Some sisters also minister to people with physical and intellectual disabilities in Oka and Ilu Ireti Leprosarium in western Nigeria. The School of Midwifery in Zonkwa, northern Nigeria, trains midwives, who work in many states across the country after their training. Our sisters also work in the Eye Clinics of the hospitals in Pramso, Ghana, and Iseyin, Nigeria.

Youth ministry

In Youth Horizons, Dublin, Ireland, the sisters work with young boys and girls in the local community in Tallaght to complete their Leaving Certificate and encourage them to further their education and be gainfully employed. In St Louis House, Belfast, Ireland, the sisters give pastoral training to young people, preparing them to take up leadership positions in the church and society in the future.

Our sisters in Étampes, France, work with a choir made up of young people between 10 and 17 years old. The choir named ‘St Louis Choir’, share the unity, oneness and love of God promoted by the spirituality of the Sisters of St Louis. The choir animates Masses in various parts of the deanery, and their youthful and joyful singing helps the parish community to participate actively in the liturgy. Their singing ministry is now encouraging the youths in neighbouring deaneries to set up their own choirs and engage in joint musical activities and youth programmes in the diocese. The new community in the Foundation House in Juilly is also engaged with some of the pupils in Cours Bautain and in the Parish through catechism classes and animation of Masses.

Work with migrants and displaced people

Many of our retired sisters are involved in the Fáilte Isteach, (Irish for ‘Welcome In’) project in Monaghan, Ireland. This is a community project involving predominantly older volunteers welcoming migrants through conversational English classes. In addition to offering free weekly English conversation classes, it also has other activities, including local history talks and céili dancing.

In England, one of our sisters works with the Domestic Migrant Workers to organize themselves in a way that ensures that their rights are honored and respected by the government and their employers.

HIV/Aids prevention and care

Our sisters in Brazil cofounded and work in the AAVE Project in Goiânia, which was established in 1995 to work with people living with HIV/AIDS, and to offer information and education in relation to HIV/AIDS.

In Zonkwa, Nigeria, there is a counseling centre for HIV/AIDS patients, and sisters reach out to clients in the surrounding villages ensuring that they benefit from the medication and other supplies from the government and from Caritas Nigeria.

Care for the homeless, destitute and marginalised

Our sisters in Lagos, Nigeria, visit the inmates of Lagos State Ministry of Youth and Social Development in Majidun, Ikorodu, on a weekly basis, to serve them food, clothes and other supplies. The rehabilitation centre was set up by Lagos State in 1970, to hold people who have been arrested for begging on the streets of Lagos. Many of the beggars have intellectual or physical disabilities, and are detained until they are able to pay fines of roughly 15,000 Naira or get in touch with their relatives to bail them out. In the centre, the beggars and youths learn new vocational skills to help their employability.

In Uromi, Nigeria, the sisters run a home for the elderly who are poor and have been neglected by their families.

In New York, our sisters are community volunteers at Abraham House, which provides services to at-risk families, particularly the wives and mothers of the incarcerated.

Promoting the spirituality of care of the earth

Our charism Sint Unum makes us very aware of the interconnectedness and relationship between all creatures great and small. Therefore one of the strong pillars of our education programmes is promoting the spirituality of the care of the environment and sustainability of our universe. We collaborate with people of other faiths, or of no faith, to develop the consciousness of celebrating and promoting the unity in diversity of all creatures and living out the moral and ethical responsibility of caring for the earth and especially the poor who are affected by the degradation and pillaging of the earth’s resources and ecosystems.

Through ongoing development of our sisters, we tap into the growing global awareness of the dignity and significance of the whole community of life and the desire to work together with others for oneness, reconciliation and to eradicate the systemic injustices of our world, which threaten both current and future generations.

We also engage with local communities to promote agricultural projects to combat food insecurity in some of the countries where we work.