Letters from the Field

April 16, 2006
Easter Sunday

Dear Friends,

I send you warmest greetings and blessings this season of Easter, Passover, and Springtime. It has been a while since my last letter from the field-not because I haven't been on the road working in many places, but more because of lack of time to write. Since my last letter in late November I have worked in Wisconsin, Ireland (Dublin and Cork), Northern Ireland (Newry and Belfast), South Africa (Johannesburg and Cape Town), Botswana (Francistown and Gabarone), Santa Barbara CA, Cincinnati OH and El Paso TX. I am on retreat for Holy Week at Santa Sabina Center in San Rafael, California, and in the beauty and peace of these special days, I have a few moments to reflect on the deeper meaning of recent Capacitar work.
A theme running through my many experiences with people in the field is the transforming power of love in the midst of human suffering--a theme deeply embodied in the Easter mysteries. So this letter will share stories of people who incarnate this transforming power of love in service of their communities.

Capacitar at the Border

Last weekend I worked in El Paso, Texas under the auspices of the Esperanza (Hope) Project, Candlelighters and the Texas Cancer Council (TCC). Esperanza Project, headed by Anibal and Isabel Olague, does organizing and outreach within the colonias, very poor border communities. Here life is one of suffering for Mexican immigrants who live in shacks or old trailers, in many cases, without water, sanitation, healthcare or other basic services. In many of these communities people can be diagnosed for cancer, but there are no funds for their treatment. And because of a history of discrimination as well as the cultural mores of the colonias, there is a basic distrust of government agencies and the healthcare system. Given recent massive protests around the United States against proposed immigration policies, the work of Esperanza Project is all the more significant. In collaboration with well-known activist Daniel Solis and his loan and housing projects for the colonias, Anibal and Isabel plan to educate people in their basic rights, train and empower them as community leaders, and share the healing practices of Capacitar as part of their program. Capacitar has walked in solidarity with the people of El Paso for the last five years training health promoters, caregivers and grassroots leaders. We have witnessed the great love of people and communities working with very little to support those who have even less. Our workshop last weekend included a broad cross section of men and women from El Paso, neighboring cities and colonias, as well as from Juarez, Mexico where weekly many people are killed in the corruption and violence. Jesus and his Juarez delegation, including members of his own family, came to learn our simple skills. They spoke enthusiastically and with great love about how they planned to share the healing methods with large numbers of people in their parish clinic where the border poor have few resources to care for their families. We now have a Capacitar Cancer Manual (English and Spanish versions), sponsored by TCC and Esperanza Project and look forward to continued work and partnership at the Border.

Capacitar for Alcohol, Drug and Mental Health Services

A wonderful new collaboration that has developed for Capacitar is with the Department of Alcohol, Drug and Mental Health Services (ADMHS) in Santa Barbara, California. Laura Mancuso, ADMHS Project Manager, and I laugh about how we met-on the internet last August! She googled “Wellness and Healing”, and up popped “Capacitar”. When I received her email of inquiry, I responded that we already had an established program at La Casa De Maria in Santa Barbara. Laura, with the backing of the ADMHS Executive Leadership Team, organized a series of sampler workshops for leadership, admin, clinic staffs, community-based organizations and clients throughout the county. ADMHS serves about 10,000 people a year. Besides use of Capacitar with clients, ADMHS leadership was also concerned about self-care for those doing the work. As a result of several days of sampler workshops, many of the participants started using the practices almost immediately in their personal lives as well as with their clients. Because of their enthusiastic response, ADMHS has contracted a Capacitar in depth training for 2006 with a fine multicultural group of 30 men and women representing a cross section of communities from around the county. ADMHS Director Dr. James Broderick, MD, modeled servant leadership when he and his Executive Team arrived to inaugurate the days of training with a warm message of encouragement and support. As part of their practicum, participants will use Capacitar methods with outreach to the homeless, the mentally ill, pregnant low-income Hispanic women, youth at juvenile justice, low-income Latino families, caregivers, and with centers for alcohol and drug recovery.

Capacitar for Children

In different parts of the world where Capacitar works, teachers and psychologists are beginning to recognize the overwhelming suffering and trauma of children and the importance of caring for them, as well as teaching them how to care for themselves. Many children around the world currently are victims of the violence and dysfunction of their families, communities and societies, and grow up to re-enact the same patterns of violence. Tsotsi, which just won the Academy Award for the best foreign film, portrays a young thug from a South African township, who is victim of a violent father and a mother who dies of AIDS. In the film Tsotsi is finally transformed in truth by care of a helpless baby who is likewise his victim. Similar scenes of violence happen daily in Africa as well as in innercity USA. Several places where I recently worked-Cincinnati Ohio, Cape Town, South Africa, and Gaborone, Botswana--have persons of loving concern working with children and teachers in the schools.
Mary Duennes and her colleagues of Good Samaritan Hospital are parish nurses in Cincinnati desirous of making a difference in the lives of children and poor families in their area. For the last three years Mary has been teaching Capacitar for Kids to teachers, children in the classroom, school staffs and student leaders in several Cincinnati schools to empower children and their families to manage their feelings and to heal their lives. The pilot work has been funded by a grant from Catholic Health Initiatives and the Good Samaritan Foundation.
Halfway around the world Berenice Daniels, psychologist for 240 township schools in the Cape Town area, deals regularly with the impact of violence and assaults on the children in her charge. The day we arrived to offer a workshop for school counselors in her region, Berenice met us under great duress. An hour earlier a child had been knifed to death in the school corridor on his way to use the bathroom. Berenice was trying to put together an emergency response team to work with the children, their families and staff at the school. On previous visits Berenice described how children ducked bullets on their way to school with gang fights in the streets around the playgrounds. She has been using the Capacitar practices in her counseling sessions with teachers and children. Newlands Rotary of Cape Town is planning to support a pilot program led by Berenice using Capacitar methods in township schools.
In Modipane and Mokatsi, near Gaborone, Botswana, Nancy and Francoise Horenburg work at their wellness center with village youth and families teaching them healing skills to better their lives. When we arrived at the center, the village chief Khosi, who is without legs because of diabetes (very prevalent in the community), was pushed over the sandy soil in his wheel chair to his place of honor next to a village policewoman and a social worker. Nancy and her youth offered a wonderful demonstration program (all in Setswana) of Capacitar practices for the chief and local families, a first time for the village. Most of these children are very poor and even if they get an education there are no jobs because of the high rate of unemployment. Botswana claims the second highest rate of HIV/AIDS in the world, with 37.8% infection by UN statistics. So with loving care, Nancy is giving the youth positive self-esteem and ways to heal the trauma and violence of their lives. And the children are responding accordingly. Even the child who was the biggest bully has come around and is one of the star members of the group.
In our work with AIDS groups in both Gaborone and Francistown, we now have a Capacitar AIDS Manual in Setswana, translated by a team of youth leaders and AIDS workers at the Tirasanyo Center in Gaborone, and funded by the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth, Kentucky. This Setswana Manual will be of great support for caregivers and AIDS groups not only in Botswana, but also in parts of Setswana-speaking South Africa.

Ireland: Healing Communities of Conflict

In Northern Ireland, Capacitar work continues to grow with a training of trainers scheduled to start in May in Banbridge, a neutral location in the North where Protestants, Catholics and groups from all sides would be more comfortable coming together. Many hundreds of people have learned the basic Capacitar skills and are using them with community outreach, conflict resolution programs, rural health centres, trauma centres and in the schools. The Trauma Advisory Panel and Women's Aid of Newry organized a taster day for their region and have incorporated Capacitar methods in their programs. The Conflict Trauma Resource Centre in Belfast brought together individuals and staffs representing a cross-section of victims groups representing different sides of the conflict.
In the South of Ireland we had our first workshop in Cork convened by Kathleen Day, ijs, who is helping to coordinate Capacitar-Ireland, and Fachtna O'Driscoll, SMA, Provincial of the Society of African Missions. Eighty men and women came together with so much enthusiasm to learn the skills, that an in depth training is now scheduled to start in January 2007.
An added joy for me in Cork was visiting the grave and home of Nano Nagle, founder of the Sisters of the Presentation, the congregation that I have been a part of from early childhood-first as a child in Presentation schools, then as a sister, and now as an associate member. Nano Nagle, voted woman of the year 2000 in Ireland, was indeed a revolutionary of her times. In 18th century Ireland when the penal laws made it illegal for the Irish poor to receive an education, Nano started clandestine schools for girls, and later for boys, risking jail and possible execution for educating and empowering the poor. In many ways I feel that Capacitar is a continuation of this legacy and spirit of Nano Nagle. So it did not surprise me when we had such an overwhelming turnout for our first Cork workshop. Somehow Nano's spirit was indeed hovering nearby, extending her vision “to do all in her power to be of service in any part of the world!”

Wisconsin and Rwanda

One of the deepest calls for me to enter the darkness of suffering to learn transforming love has come to me in Wisconsin, where we are starting our sixth year of Multicultural Wellness Education training under the auspices of the Center to BE and Director Marjorie Wilbur. Sister Antoinette Gasibirege, a Rwandan sister who survived the 1994 genocide, was one of our training participants this past year. In Rwanda during 100 days-April to July 1994-one million people (mostly Tutsis and moderate Hutus) were brutally and systematically slaughtered while the rest of the world watched, ignored or denied what was happening. Twenty-one members of Antoinette's family were massacred. When I first met Antoinette she asked me straight out, “When is Capacitar going to Rwanda?” And I remember the moment when I looked back into her face of pain and wisdom and said: “I will walk with you however I can, so you can be the one to bring Capacitar to your people.” And that is what we are now doing starting this summer. In June I will meet up with Antoinette in Rwanda and with Mary Fabri, Director of the Marjorie Kovlar Center of Chicago, who works with refugees and the tortured and who has been working for several years in Rwanda. Together we will collaborate on trainings for lay counselors in Kigali. Antoinette and I will also work with Sr. Genevieve Van Waesburghe, MMM, in Butare and other villages and sites of massacres. In Butare we will be joined by Constancia Mbogoma of Capacitar-Tanzania, who has led workshops for Sr. Genevieve on previous visits. For this new commitment to Rwanda, our short trauma manual has been translated into French by Anne-Pascale Brault, Professor of Languages at DePaul University, Chicago. Our workshops in Rwanda will be offered in one or more of four languages: English, French, Kinyarwanda, and Swahili depending upon the group and location.
Already the signs of transforming love are evident. At the end of our in depth training, participants are asked to share some creative expression of what the work has meant to them and how they have been transformed in the process. For her creative expression Sister Antoinette gave us an expression of profound love and healing--she danced for us-she danced her native dance of Rwanda! And Antoinette has not been able to dance since the genocide! As she played the haunting music of her tradition, she explained that the song was a love song inviting the beloved to come back home, a song for planting and for building new life. So as we walk together with Antoinette and her people learning the love that transforms all darkness, we ask your prayer and support for the healing and transformation of our world.

With peace and blessings,
Pat Cane
Capacitar International Capacitar website

We join with the Earth and with each other
With our ancestors and all beings of the future
To bring new life to the land
To recreate the human community
To provide justice and peace
To remember our children, to remember who we are.
We join together as many and diverse expressions
Of one loving mystery
For the healing of the earth
And the renewal of all life.
--Capacitar Prayer
adapted from the UN Prayer of the Sabbath