Oct 24 2013

Mission Sunday – Fundraising Campaign for the Philippines in Croatia

Dehonian Mission Community is a group of lay people connected with the Mary Mother of Church and St. Maximilian Kolbe Parish in Zagreb, Croatia, administered by SCJ priests. The group was established on March 14th, 2011.  The main goal of this community is to help the Dehonian missions. Ms. Mirela Vukovic, the head of the community, wrote “We decided to have 3 charity actions per year, when we collect money from our parishioners. Last year we sent our donations to Dehonian priests in Africa and in upcoming year we would like to support also the Dehonian mission in the Philippines.”

On the occasion of the Mission Sunday, the Dehonian Mission Community (DMZ) organized on October 20th, 2013, an exhibition and fundraising campaign for the Dehonian mission in the Philippines. Since last year, the DMZ is linked with the Dehonians, through Fr. Francis Pupkowski SCJ, who has been working on the island of Mindanao since 1989, one of the poorest and least developed parts of the country. Recently, the island has been hit twice by devastating typhoons. Typhoon Pablo in December 2012 – was one of the strongest, but due to earlier warnings it did not cause as many damages as Typhoon Sendong in 2011. Besides the damages, it claimed many lives. Until now, a number of families continue to live in temporary shelters. That’s why a group of different religious communities has decided to raise funds to buy a piece of land and start construction of new residential houses. The plan is to build 500 of them. The cost of one house is 125,000 Philippine Pesos, or 3,000 US Dollars. Last June 2013, the DMZ was able to send to the Philippines an amount good for one house which was collected in earlier actions.

The exhibition prepared by Ms. Mira Vukovic  and Pavice Ercegovac comprised of three parts: the Philippines and scale of damages due to typhoons, Dehonians in the Philippines , and the ” Croatian house” – a house that is being built from funds collected by the faithful and numerous friends of the mission .

For more pictures please click here.