February 12, 2018 – The Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns is honored to announce that Father Schwinghamer, MM has joined Father John Barth, MM in ministry at the Palabek Refugee Camp in Uganda. Father Dave, who served as program associate for Africa and Sustainable Peace at the Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns since 2013, was a missioner in East Africa for more than 25 years before joining the Office for Global Concerns staff in Washington, D.C.
Father Dave's overseas experience was in Tanzania beginning in 1969. While in Tanzania he learned Ki-Swahili and has worked in several different parts of the country in both rural and urban assignments. From 1990-96 he was director of the Center for Faith and Justice in Dar es Salaam. He has served as an international election observer for elections in South Africa and Tanzania. He has graduate training in Conflict Transformation from Eastern Mennonite University and an MA in Social Science from the University of Chicago. His areas of research are on the causes of hunger and the causes of war in Africa; the regional economy of Sukumaland, Tanzania; and the Burundi peace process. From 1997-1999 he did pastoral work with the Jesuit Refugee Service in the refugee camps in western Tanzania.
Photo: Father David Schwinghamer, MM (right) with Maryknoll Missioners at the People's Climate March in New York City, 2014.
Maryknoll Father John Barth sent the following update from Palabek Rufugee Camp on February 12, 2018:
"The settlement population at Palabek Refugee Camp rises weekly. We are now up to 41,000 people - 60 percent of them are school-age children. Our top priority is to build and staff primary and secondary schools for these children. To this end Maryknoll is teaming up with the Salesian missionaries to provide four nursery schools to enroll 200 each. Most of the teachers have been hired in the camp itself with others coming from the Ugandans living around the camp. Today the school doors opened (actually there are no doors yet, just a roof and brick pillars.) Maryknoll is supplying uniforms, school supplies and porridge each day for the next year. It's a drop in the bucket but it's a start.
"According to the British NGO Windle Trust International, South Sudan is stuck at the bottom of the global league table for education. Enrollment rates are the lowest in the world and reflect a profound gender bias. Literacy levels, especially for women, are shockingly low.
"From nursery school children in Palabek Regugee Settlement Camp (Lumwo District, Uganda) to nursing students at Catholic Health Training Institute in Wau, South Sudan, Maryknoll is trying to contribute to the solution that will take long but nothing less than the future of South Sudan is at stake."