Sister Niluka Perera, RGS
Coordinator, Catholic Care for Children International

New Leaders Campaign

Catholic Care for Children International (CCCI) is a global network of religious congregations committed to finding a family for every child, reducing recourse to institutional care and encouraging family or community-based care for children. The world is waking up to the importance of reforming existing systems of care for children: no matter how much love a child receives in an institution, it is no substitute for a family or family-like system.

CCCI supports religious Sisters, helping them to read the signs of our time and make their charism of care relevant to today’s context. The creation of the CCCI office at UISG is the result of Sister-led care reform in Uganda, Zambia and Kenya during the past few years. We are called to dream big in order to find a better, more sustainable future for the children in our care; we are called to let go of old ways of responding to issues related to caring for children. For this, we need to open ourselves to the new with an open mind, open heart, and open will, nurturing new ways of thinking, being, and doing.

This change requires skills, training and capacity-building. CCCI creates and offers new training opportunities for Sisters, supporting them to engage with Church-based and  other groups working on care reform locally, nationally or regionally. We also assist Sisters in the creation of life-giving care structures at the national level. Slowing and steadily, women religious are becoming champions of care reform, thus realising the vision of the CCCI movement: a vision to have a family for every child.