This coming October will be 4 years since Sister Kerry Rowland, SCH, answered the call of the Federation to minister in Belize with the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth. At first, coming to teach at St. Martin De Porres School on the south side of Belize City, and now Sister Kerry works in the school’s library. This ministry has allowed her to teach those who need extra help, lend an ear to those who need it, and link staff with resources. However, much of her time is spent in basic cleaning, sorting, updating, and organizing thousands of literacy resources in order to draw students and teachers in.

Sister Kerry has been working in the library, especially for the last, COVID, year. Within this time, she has transformed the library to make it increasingly child and teacher-friendly. Given limited electronics available, Sister Kerry has focused on book baskets to increase picture visibility and to bring out topics from the numerous library shelves. This has drawn the attention of the children to see new topics, leading to more books being checked out. Teachers also have an advantage because of these baskets of books. Teachers discuss and collaborate with Sister Kerry about curriculum themes and how the library can be used to enhance these. Sister Kerry then draws these books and other resources off the shelves and places them in accessible baskets for easy search, cutting down on the time teachers would have used to search for these books themselves.

Sister Kerry has been finding this literacy ministry very exciting and life-giving. She is very thankful to be able to be at St. Martin’s. The administration, staff, and students have been grateful to her for her contributions.

We, too, as the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth thank Sister Kerry for her YES to come to Belize as she is allowing a vital mission to continue!

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Source: https://nazareth.org/