MARIST SOLIDARITY EFFORTS

The Marist Brothers are deeply committed to living its Mission of making Jesus Christ known and Loved, particularly among the least favored in our world. Coordinated efforts to be in Solidarity with the poorest of our world are lived out in many dynamic ways in all 82 countries that are served by the Marist Brothers.

In the USA Province, every Marist school allocates a significant amount of funding to ensure that many worthy students that would be otherwise unable to avail of a Marist education due to financial hardships are able to do so through a substantial financial assistance program. Additionally, every Marist school offers all its students the opportunity to live our Catholic and Marist values in real concrete ways through various service projects such as volunteering at local homeless shelters, participating in numerous Mission Trips as well as many tutoring programs.

On a Province wide level, the Marist Brothers support a wide range of Solidarity projects, including the following:

• More than 800 young people volunteer each summer at our Mid Hudson Valley Camp in Esopus, NY. The camp offers 10 weeklong summer camps for disabled and underprivileged children and adults. Learn more about our camps here.

• The Encuentro Project in El Paso, TX, opened in 2018 as a joint project between the USA Province and the Province of Mexico Occidental. The project offers both assistance to the thousands of refugees arriving at our USA boarder as well as the opportunity for many church and school groups to live at Annunciation House for a week and learn first hand the difficult realities of our Refugee Brothers and Sisters.

• The Marist Brothers USA Province provides numerous opportunities each year for Lay Marists and Marist Young Adults from around the USA to participate in a wide range of Mission Trips. These Mission Encounters include international service trips, service trips to El Paso, TX to directly work with the many refugees crossing our USA borders, as well as an annual mission trip to Appalachia, the poorest region of our country.

• Each of our Marist schools host a variety of fundraisers annually to support numerous Marist Solidarity Projects around the Marist World.

During the 2019/20 School year, all Marist Schools in the USA will focus on raising awareness about five worldwide Marist projects that directly assist the many Refugees and Migrants in our world. The schools will help educate the more than 12,000 students in our USA schools about the dynamic work being done in these projects and will also help raise needed funds for these projects. Click below on each of the five projects to learn more about these efforts of Solidarity.

• The Blue Marists in Allepo
• The Fratelli Project in Lebanon
• The Three2six Project in South Africa
• The Brighter Future Project in Bangledash
• The Encuentro Project in El Paso, TX

The Marist Brothers FMSI office in Rome helps coordinate many other worldwide Marist Solidarity Projects.

The Conference of Major Superiors of Men (CMSM) hosts a National Justice and Peace office which also sponsors numerous Solidarity efforts.