Champagnat Movement of the Marist Family
The Champagnat Movement of the Marist family in its long history of 30 years has wanted to help each member to discover and carry out his/her personal mission in the construction of the Kingdom of God. The new Project of Life which is being prepared within the process of updating of the Movement continues to include this dimension of the Marist mission, which seeks to develop the Marian face of the Church, that is to say, a Church that is humble, that serves and accepts, committed with those in greater need.
In our site we will be sharing some witnesses of Marist Fraternities which are projected in social centers, parishes, schools… with a strong dimension of solidarity that integrates it with their family and professional obligations. Today we present the Fraternities Champagnat, Rosey and Saint Fermin Fraternity from Sarriguren, Spain.
Committed to the Marist mission in Sarriguren
Our fraternities are characterised by the diversity of its members in their age, professions and life situations.
This has made us aware of how one can live the Marist charism from very different perspectives. Discovering how one can live the Marist mission in many diverse fields is a great richness for everyone. These fields vary from children and youth education in school, as well as business, health, justice, hospitality, parish and their own homes.
We have different origins – some come from a youth group that ended up being a fraternity that consolidated it. Others were born from the dynamics of a school’s parents and others, from a group of animators of groups that wanted to have room for growth in the faith and in Marist life.
Since then and until now, we have lived together many events, and we have tried to convey what gives meaning to our being and our doing.
In our chronology, we can highlight many activities both in relation to the Marist school where we come from, and in supporting actions of solidarity.
These include supporting the annual campaign of the NGO SED (Solidarity education and development), volunteer work camps in different countries with the most vulnerable, collaborating with other voluntary associations of the city, those involved in parishes as catechists of children and youth and the formation of new marriages.
But we would like to review a special project that was born from us, from the reflected proposal, coordinated and organised by the three fraternities in response to the second provincial chapter that called us to be more present among the Montagne of today.
Mayte Ballaz and Brother José Luis Lázaro were present in this provincial chapter and they brought us the strength and the drive that they experienced in the chapter.
We had an encounter among the three fraternities to analyse and think of what we could do to be closer to the Montagne of today.
An initiative, which received the name of MAS Project (Marists Social Action), was born from this encounter.
The first proposal was to design a programme of educational support for children in vulnerable situations in the municipality where the school is located. Thanks to the fact that a Brother, Br José Ignacio Hualde, was at that time the school’s ministry coordinator, the area’s social services were contacted for it to be available to all who needed some kind of educational support even if they were not from the school. That is how academic support outside school hours for children was created, offering educational support even if they did or did not have learning or economic problems. The support was taken on from the beginning by the school itself, and offers them a safe, welcoming and accompanied space that avoids them being on the street at inappropriate hours or alone at home.
Literacy sessions to learn Spanish were promoted for adult foreign migrants by the social services of Sarriguren. A campaign to gather Christmas toys to distribute to those families with a precarious economic situation was also established.
The fraternities promoted these activities and invited parents, teachers and the school’s students to participate.
The school’s ministry team helped establish these activities in order to have better coordination and reinforced its plan to give attention to the needy.
Some of the people of this team are members of one of the three fraternities of the Champagnat Movement.