Belle Harbor Students Reach Out to Somalian War Victims

By Linda Busetti

You could hear a pin drop as Kevin Kearney told 300 students at St. Francis de Sales elementary school that boys their age serve as child soldiers in the militia in war-torn Somalia.

It is common for children in Mogadishu to pick up small bombs they find along the street and end up losing an eye or a hand.

Some desperate families sacrifice a child for service in the militia because they need the income, Kearney said. The United Nations has estimated that there are 300,000 child soldiers worldwide. Sometimes the boy soldiers are photographed for propaganda reasons carrying AK47s, which are automatic weapons and too heavy for the children to use.

Kearney, who serves on the board of directors of Concern Worldwide U.S., is active in the Belle Harbor parish, where he has lived since 1979.

Linda Busetti Photo

CONCERN: Students at St. Francis de Sales School, Belle Harbor, raised funds for a Concern project in Somalia by selling T-shirts designed by fifth-grader Kelly Casey. With her are from left, Kevin Kearney, Concern board member; Sister Patricia Ann Chelius, principal; and Sally Quinn, teacher.

Concern Worldwide, which is based in Dublin, began as a response to the 1968 famine in Biafra in southeastern Nigeria. Today Concern, a non-denominational organization, conducts projects in almost 40 countries around the world.

In Somalia, Concern works through education programs in the capital of Mogadishu and by preventing flooding and providing clean drinking water and sanitation for 8,690 families in nearby Lower Shabelle.

Kearney jokes that he has two lives – one as a lawyer for the Brooklyn firm of Wingate, Kearney and Cullen, which has represented the Brooklyn Diocese since 1892, and the other as an advocate for Concern.

Kearney first became involved with Concern through a fellow Manhattan College alumnus, Thomas J. Moran, who is chairman of the board. As a volunteer over the past nine years, Kearney has traveled to Haiti, Ethiopia, and Pakistan on behalf of Concern. Last year in Ethiopia, he saw how education and nutrition programs can bring smiles to children’s faces. One way is that Concern distributes high-protein plumpy’nut, a food used in famine relief, to malnourished children.

He says he would like to travel next to Somalia, but it is considered too dangerous. What he did consider “daunting” was the task of addressing the elementary school students at St. Francis. He pulled off along the FDR Drive one morning, as he contemplated that challenge, for a 45-minute cell phone call from Abdi Rashid, Concern’s country director for Somalia. Rashid was calling from Mogadishu, capital of the East African country.

Somalia has had no recognized central government authority since 1991. Heavy fighting between Mogadishu warlords and militia loyal to the Islamic Courts Union “ICU” is constant.

Ten percent of children die at birth in Somalia, one of the highest child mortality rates in the world, and 25% of those surviving birth die before age five.

The average annual family income is about $360. Nomads and semi-nomads who herd livestock make up a large portion of the population, because only 2% of the land is suitable for farming. Over 400,000 Somalis are currently living in refugee camps because of the constant state of anarchy.

To change this situation, Kearney is working to raise funds for Concern-U.S.’s support of the Elman Football Club in Somalia, which gets children interested in sports as an alternative to the militia and encourages education. Concern funds the program, which teaches children through sports, in this case soccer. Boys learn about teamwork and develop self-confidence and communication skills. It also gets them into informal school programs so they can learn to read and write.

Only one in five children in Somalia attends school.
Somalia is almost completely Sunni Muslim. Christianity was abolished in the 1970s when church-run schools were closed and Holy Ghost missionaries were sent home to Ireland. There has been no Catholic Archbishop of the Mogadishu cathedral since 1989.

So it was this story of Somali children’s lives that Kearney planned to share with the fifth- through eighth-grade students at St. Francis de Sales School in February. He brought along Siobhan Walsh, chief executive of Concern-U.S., and Delia Dunlap, of Concern’s Education Office, and together they presented a 45-minute PowerPoint presentation to the youngsters. There wasn’t a sound from the students as they watched, said Sister Patricia Ann Chelius, C.S.J., principal.

After Kearney’s talk about the boy soldiers, there was time for questions, and one boy asked incredulously, “Do they fight against adults?”

The next day some eighth-grade boys arrived at school with money they had collected from their relatives for Concern.

Kearney has also recruited his neighbor Sally Quinn, a kindergarten teacher at St. Francis, who helped organize a T-shirt design contest. A T-shirt designed by fifth-grader Kelly Casey was produced, which is offered for sale to raise funds for Concern in Somalia. The white T-shirt features children holding hands encircling the green world, with St. Francis School at the center.

Quinn says that Casey’s dad bought her one in each size so she can always have one, as she grows older.

St. Francis de Sales’ Student Council is planning some Pizza Days as fundraisers, says Sister Patricia Ann, who makes sure that credit is given where due.

Kearney said he would like to make the same presentation to high school students in the diocese.

Perhaps a greater awareness of the world would encourage young people to work to bring about changes in the lives of children such as those in Somalia.

He will show them the little MUAC bands that Concern uses to measure mid-upper arm circumference to gauge a child’s state of malnutrition. Two adult fingers would fit in the band that commonly measures the upper arm of a starving child in Somalia. Kearney has seen this with his own eyes.

“Children do not pick where they are born,” Kearney says.

To contact Concern or to make a donation go to www.concernusa.org or call Delia Dunlap at 212-557-8000.

WITH CONCERN, Kevin Kearney has seen projects at work in Ethiopia, left, Haiti and Pakistan.

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