Peter Trust Projects
The Peter Trust assists with a variety of efforts being made to provide better education and health care in Timor Leste (East Timor).
A number of one-off or short term projects have been helped by The Peter Trust since it was first established in May 2000. These have has included:
Funding to the Women's Woven Arts Workshop in Dili, and the sale in this country of their artefacts which are made from Timorese tais (scarves and cloths)woven by village women on simple hand looms.
Click here to view pictures of Women's Woven Arts Workshop
Financial Support to the Repair Workshop set up in Ainaro by Maryknoll Missionary Sisters to repair wheelchairs and other equipment needed by people with physical disability.
Funding - in partnership with NGO TB Timor - for vaccination against tuberculosis in the district of Liquisa in the North West of East Timor.
One special (Christmas) project was to offer a number of impoverished families the means to purchase domestic livestock (pigs, goats, chickens).
Click here to view pictures of Repair Workshop
Click here to view pictures of Animal Dispersal
Assistance was given to the Parish Primary School in Ermera, Our Lady of Lourdes, for improvements to the sanitation arrangements and the purchase of some teaching materials.
The Peter Trust has also assisted several East Timorese students with tertiary studies in Kupang (West Timor), Jogykarta (Java, Indonesia), in Dili (East Timor), and at several universities in the United Kingdom (Southbank, Glasgow, and Bradford). Each candidate successfully graduated and returned to East Timor to help as best they could in the building of the nation.
Click here to view pictures of Our Lady of Lourdes Primary School, Ermera.
Click here to view a slideshow of Graduation.
In the long term, assistance has been given by supporting the work being undertaken in these field of education and health by members of several international Religious Congregations or Lay Institutes who are active in the territory such as ...
The Sisters of St Paul of Chartres (SPC);
The Salesians of St John Bosco (SDB);
The Society of Jesus (SJ);
The Missionary Dominican Sisters of the Rosary (OP);
The Association of the Institute for Lay Missionaries (ALMA);
The Servants of the Divine Word (SVD);
The Light of Friendship Association (AHISAUN).
More detailed accounts of the support given by The Peter Trust to all these endeavours can be read in successive issues of the Peter Trust Bulletin East Timor Update.
At the present time Peter Trust funds are principally disbursed to the following enterprises:
The Hospital and Mobile Clinic of the Sisters of St Paul of Chartres (SPC)
(For further information see East Timor Update (Special Edition) March 2018).
The Congregation of the Sisters of St Paul of Chartres is a Roman Catholic religious apostolic society for teaching, nursing, visiting the poor, and taking care of orphans, the old and infirm and the mentally ill. It was founded in Chartres (France) in 1704 and has become well established in the Far East.
In 1995 the Sisters established a General Hospital in Suai, a small township on the South Coast of East Timor near to the border with (Indonesian) West Timor. From this base a Mobile Clinic regularly travels to several villages in the vicinity, in the rural district of Covalima.
Several hundred people of all ages visit the Clinic in each of the locations - currently eight in number. The occasion also provides an opportunity to raise general awareness of the importance of good nutrition, hygiene and sanitation.
An SPC Novitiate has been founded in Railaku, a conurbation in the hills south west of the capital city Dili, where those young women undertaking their formation into religious life assist in wide-ranging pastoral care in association with the local Parish - which is in the charge of priests of the Society of Jesus.
The Peter Trust has funded all the medicines provided through the Mobile Clinic and at the Hospital (which offers a daily general clinic, mother and baby care, and specialises in the diagnosis and treatment of TB which is endemic in East Timor).
The Trust has paid for the training and the wages of indigenous nurses and administrative assistants, and of the driver of the off-road vehicle. The Trust also assists with the salary of the full time (Filipino) doctor - who has special expertise in family medicine - and has part funded the water supply to the SPC Novitiate.
The Salesians of Don Bosco (SDB)
Members of this religious community of ordained priests and consecrated brothers and sisters, have been present in East Timor since the time of Portuguese colonial rule. They remained active during the years of Indonesian occupation (1975-99) during which period they established Technical and Agricultural Colleges and other practical training facilities, and provided for the care of orphans and for the general needs of the poor.
The Peter Trust sponsors a number of students at the first Technical College to be established, at Fatumaca, near Baucau in the east of the country - and has made donations towards a 'family feeding' project based there.
Click here to view pictures of Family Feeding Project
The Trust has also sponsored students at the Agricultural College at Fuiloro (Lospalos), and currently sponsors others attending the Technical College in Comorro, a suburb of Dili.
Recently another Technical College has been established at Maliana in the south west near to the border with West Timor which, though largely self-sufficient with significant funding from the National Government, is still in need of assistance from the Trust with provision of items - such as church furnishings - for the spiritual welfare of the resident community of students and staff.
Click here to view pictures of Comorro Technical College, Dili (2011), Technical College (Fatumaca) and Agricultural College (Fuiloro) 2017.
