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Parishioners, Amy Thomas, Annette Venables and Paul Venables, left to right, attended a cornerstone blessing in November for what will become a new girls dormitory at St. Xavier School in Gurap, India, funded by Tribe Rising India.
Dec. 2, 2019
Christina Gray
Catholic San FranciscoFew parishioners of Our Lady of Mount Carmel knew much if anything about the plight of India’s Santal tribe before Jesuit Father Maria Joseph Savariappan came to visit the Mill Valley parish.
The Indian-born priest completing a doctoral degree in Catholic educational leadership at the time at the University of San Francisco stepped in for a few weeks for the vacationing pastor, Father Pat Michaels, in 2017.
One night at a meeting of a new faith-sharing and service group he told members about the Santals’ long history of prejudice and generational poverty. Now a parish couple has started a nonprofit and raised $150,000 to help tribal children in one small village rise above that fate by expanding the capacity of the school which currently ends at the fourth grade.
“People talk about the ‘untouchables’ and the Santals are part of that bracket or even below it,” parishioner Paul Venables told Catholic San Francisco Nov. 22, after returning from a trip to St. Xavier School in Gurap, India, with his wife, Annette, with whom he co-founded Tribe Rising India.
Parishioner Amy Thomas came with them.
Venables, conceived of and branded a Catholic apostolate offering equal parts prayer and action called Random Acts of Catholics in 2016. It was a monthly meeting of the group that Father Savariappan attended when the group heard about the Santals and decided to take on their cause.
The Catholic boarding school outside Kolkata is one of seven missions run by the Jesuits of West Bengal dedicated to the education of Santal children who are unwelcome in public schools, and/or who do poorly because of deeply entrenched caste prejudice and teachers who do not speak Santali, the tribal language.
Father Savariappan, now back in his native land, is an official at the school and is overseeing the the growth Tribe Rising India is helping to make possible. He invited the trio to participate in the ceremonial blessing of the first brick laid for a new girls dormitory.
It was one of the first steps toward a goal of adding one new grade a year to accommodate more Santal students.
Already a playground has been leveled and fenced, a computer lab and sound system installed, a washing machine purchased and 200 coconut trees planted to mark the expanding property. The trees will eventually supply shade, food and drink to local families.
Tribal Rising India plans to raise $2 million more in time to build a high school.
“This will be the first high school dedicated to the education of the Santal children, as far as we know,” said Venables, who traveled with extra suitcases packed tight with shrink-wrapped school uniforms and sports jerseys donated from St. Hilary School in Tiburon.
A short video he took in November shows a sea of small smiling faces shouting repeatedly for the camera, “We are rising! We are rising! We are rising!”
“These kids live in dirt and they are full of joy,” said Venables, the owner of a successful San Francisco advertising agency whose clients include luxury car brand Audi. “We don’t get it.”
He said the Santals have little materially, but they have what many in the West lack: solidarity.
“It’s not about the individual there,” he said. “It’s about the community, and joy comes from that.”
Although Tribe Rising India is not a ministry of Our Lady of Mount Carmel Parish, it is intrinsically tied to the parish Advent project it sprang from.
Father Michaels was initially resistant when Annette Venables approached him not long after Father Savariappan’s visit with the idea of inviting parish families to “sponsor” the annual education costs of Santal students as an Advent activity.
“She had formidable hurdles to get over in me,” said Father Michaels. “But her heartfelt desire to help the Jesuits and her persistent "whatever it takes attitude” won out.”
Exactly 103 stars were hung on the Mill Valley parish’s Christmas tree that year, each representing a Santal student in Gurap and the $420 annual cost of tuition, room and board. All 103 starts were claimed -- a total of close to $50,000.
“The first year blew me away,” said Father Michaels. “The spectrum of parishioners wanting to be involved, some even presenting the support of a child as a Christmas gift to family and friends."
“It has become our reach beyond ourselves as a parish, breaking down our parochialism and giving us a sense of what it means to belong to the Body of Christ.”
The Advent project was repeated last year with equal success.
The Venables soon saw that the sponsorships were critical, but so much more was needed to provide real opportunity to the children and their families. They decided to launch Tribe Rising India.
In a blog post on the organization’s website, Thomas, who swam across Donner Lake near Truckee in August to raise money for the Santal children in Gurap, wrote about “small causes that can have large effects.”
“If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other,” she wrote.
triberisingindia.org