I'm Sister Catherine Nasambu, of the Little Sisters of St. Joseph, Africa - following the spirituality of St. Francis of Assisi. I am the principal of Mother Oda Vocational Training Center. In this center we offer courses like: tailoring and dress-making, catering or rather hotel management, tour guiding for both boys and girls.

The young people we are helping here are not just the regular students that anyone can take. They are the students mostly who have done their class 7 examinations but they did not pass well. Most of them are school drop-outs. Many times they think that after their primary education - the high school education - they have not done well and they think that life has gone like that, they think that there is no life again. We are going around collecting them to give them hope, to give them life again. Making sure they know there is still life again after falling down.

These girls and young boys are mostly coming from the Maasai lands where the culture is still strictly traditional but this culture does not favor the girl child. They are getting married at an early stage like age 9 after being circumcised. So we are following up to help these girls to stop circumcision and then we bring them here to rehabilitate them.

Those who are getting married at an early stage, we follow them and bring them here to school and give them accommodations because if they go back to their places they go back to get married again. We find that girls of age 9 are marrying a man of 50 or 60 years who are marrying their 5th or 6th wife. We find that these girls have no future. So therefore, we are here to help them and that's why we are appealing to many well-wishers and good friends to help us help these girls have a future. Therefore here we are and we ask you kindly that wherever you are, good-hearted people, to help us help these girls to receive another life - the life they are hoping to have in the future.

Our Mother Oda school is here in Mto wa Mbu, Arusha - the heart of the Maasai land. Our sisters are trying to apply the Franciscan spirituality to help where nobody helps, to give God's creatures life again. Thank you very much and you are most welcome in this situation we are in to help these people of God. Thank you!