September 5, World Day of Charity (International Day of Charity)
Within a global context where entire populations live in situations of extreme social vulnerability, the practice of charity increasingly takes on the role of being of great need for the alleviation of human suffering.
The winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, Mother Teresa of Calcutta, who died September 5, 1997, inspired the United Nations (UN) in its choice of the date to celebrate the World Day of Charity.
The Expression of Charity
The Fraternity – International Humanitarian Federation (FIHF) acts so that an expression of charity goes beyond material aid and contributes to the growth and development of the human being, strengthening their independence and fostering their autonomy, waking up and encouraging their qualities and gifts.
Based on that premise, the Humanitarian Fraternity (FIHF) founded and coordinates the Indigenous Cultural and Training Centre (CCFI), with the support of Operation Welcome. Through the Livelihoods and Lasting Solutions Sector, the CCFI offers free training, courses and workshops to the indigenous people coming from Venezuela, Guiana and parts of Brazil, mostly concentrated in Roraima. So that the various activities offered can take place, the CCFI relies on the cooperation of various other organizations.
Lasting Solutions – Livelihoods
The CCFI developed a simple way of helping by offering the knowledge to create lasting solutions, through which immigrants and refugees can change their lives with the possibility of gaining their autonomy through income generation.
What the CCFI offers ranges from gaining literacy, arts and exhibitions, to courses on financial education and planning for the future, up to entrepreneurship through the teaching of bakery, shoemaking, and sales promotion.
Some of the courses offered:
- Literacy for indigenous Venezuelans
- Basic Portuguese for immigrants and refugees
- Financial education
- Libras
- Future planning and female independence
- Dressmaking – conscious and ecological, with the reuse and recycling of materials
- IT
- Bakery
- Hydraulics
Some of the Workshops:
- Mosaics
- Canvas shoemaking (alpargatas)
- Sales promotion
- Us and food
- Recycling trash
- Ecological disinfectant
There are also some incentive programs:
- Continuing education program for development, offered to young people and adults with the aim of promoting socioeconomic independence;
- Caring for the client and sales workshop with the aim of offering tools for direct sales to the public.
Through the trainings, the entrepreneurship, and the establishment of interculturalism, relations are established within the CCFI, human relations of fraternal co-existence, in which the expression of charity is present as the foundation for the participative rebuilding of the life of the refugees.
“As we develop fraternal charity for each other, we move ever forward in gaining what is considered the greatest of virtues.” José Trigueirinho Netto
