History and Mission
Mercy Beyond Borders was founded in 2008 by Sister Marilyn Lacey in response to the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals. Headquartered in Santa Clara, California, Mercy Beyond Borders links U.S. resources with women displaced by violence, war, oppression, environmental degradation and by poverty itself. Mercy Beyond Borders carries out its mission via two strategies:
- One Long term change: by promoting the education of women and girls.
- Two Short term economic assistance: by funding grass-roots projects designed and implemented by displaced women.
Mercy Beyond Borders raises awareness as well as funds—always in support of women rebuilding their lives. Its funding comes from individuals across the U.S. who pledge to raise $1,000 per year; from schools and clubs and other donors sponsoring a particular project; and from corporations and foundations.
Its initial projects are in the Eastern Equatoria region of southern Sudan. Mercy Beyond Borders is contributing to the education of 800 elementary girls at St. Bakhita School (through teacher salaries, goats for nutrition, hygiene supplies). It is also partnering with the Sudanese Women’s Voice for Peace as it works for the economic development of refugee women returning to their home villages.
Sr. Lacey believes the program can most effectively focus on concrete, small projects. “We can connect Mercy resources in the U.S. with projects already established in the developing countries that need seed money. We can mobilize our Mercy passion to do this. We have 10 years to meet the U.N. Millennium Goals,” she told participants and members of the Sisters of Mercy at their annual convocation in 2007. (1)
Read more about this topic: Mercy Beyond Borders
Famous quotes containing the words history and, history and/or mission:
“Modern Western thought will pass into history and be incorporated in it, will have its influence and its place, just as our body will pass into the composition of grass, of sheep, of cutlets, and of men. We do not like that kind of immortality, but what is to be done about it?”
—Alexander Herzen (1812–1870)
“What is most interesting and valuable in it, however, is not the materials for the history of Pontiac, or Braddock, or the Northwest, which it furnishes; not the annals of the country, but the natural facts, or perennials, which are ever without date. When out of history the truth shall be extracted, it will have shed its dates like withered leaves.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Man is eminently a storyteller. His search for a purpose, a cause, an ideal, a mission and the like is largely a search for a plot and a pattern in the development of his life story—a story that is basically without meaning or pattern.”
—Eric Hoffer (1902–1983)