Articles
Cans send kids in Congo to school
By William T. Clew Lynne Brouillette of Brimfield delivers mail for the United States Postal Service. And she collects cans and bottles to send youngsters to school in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (D.R.C.) in central Africa.
The only thing that one has to do with the other is that some of the people on her mail route in Sturbridge, Brimfield, Holland and Wales save their bottles and cans for her. She does not pick them up while she's delivering mail, but does so afterwards, or has helpers pick them up, she said.
She picks them up every couple of weeks, she said. She cashes them in, gets a check and sends it to Father Ephrem Kapitula, an Assumptionist stationed in Butembo, D.R.C. Father Kapitula uses the money to pay the cost of schooling for youngsters picked by the local parish, Ms. Brouillette said.
People who know about her project have been helping her. In addition to the contributions from people on her mail route, a couple of businesses in Brimfield - Yahoo's and B.T. Smokehouse - also save cans and bottles for her.
The confirmation class at St. Anne and St. Patrick Parish in Sturbridge responded by raising $149.65 last January. She made a presentation to pupils at Wells Middle School in Southbridge and they plan a can drive in school May 13-15 and have scheduled a can collection from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. May 16 at Yankee Spirits in Sturbridge.
Velvet Green Garden Center on Route 20 near the Sturbridge-Brimfield town line has agreed to be a drop-off center for cans, Ms. Brouillette said.
Joseph Pagano of Pagano Media in Worcester met Ms. Brouillette at a meeting of a group of friends of the Augustinians of the Assumption who often discuss ways in which lay people can aid the work of the religious order. When he heard about Cans for Kids in the Congo he said he would sponsor its Web site. People will be able to call up the Web site, www.kidsinthecongo.com, beginning May 20, she said. Those wishing more information before that date may call Ms. Brouillette at 413-209-6526 or e-mail This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . or Father Musande at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .
Why would Ms. Broullette, a single mother of two teenagers, a Springfield College graduate who spent nearly 12 years in the U.S. Army, wind up collecting cans to send Congolese children to school?
Well, there's a bit of a story there. She is a member of St. Anne and St. Patrick Parish in the Fiskdale section of Sturbridge. The Assumptionists serve that parish.
When two children, Brittany, 17, and Bobby, 14, finish school in a few years, Ms. Brouillette said she wants to retire. She said she wanted to do some kind of missionary work with the Assumptionists in Australia.
There was one little problem. There are no Assumptionists in Australia. There are Assumptionists in Africa. So, she said, "goodbye Australia, hello Africa."
When she told a friend, Cathy Banks of St. Anthony de Padua Parish in Dudley, of her retirement plans, Ms. Banks told her she should meet Father Salvatore Musande, an Assumptionist from the D.R.C., who has been at Assumption College in Worcester for more than two years. A short time later she met him when he spoke at a novena at her parish.
She said she was impressed with Father Musande's command of English and with his patience answering her questions about the D.R.C. Somewhere in the course of the conversation, she said, she asked him to teach her Swahili. Swahili, or Kiswahili as it sometimes is called, is the language of the Waswahili people who live along the Indian Ocean in southern Somalia and northern Mozambique. It also is the language of economics for many East Africans. It is also a national or official language of four nations.
It allows people who have their own separate first-language communicate with one another for business, diplomacy and other reasons.
She also asked Father Musande how someone in the United States could help a Congolese family. He said, "educate a child." She said she asked how much it would take to educate a child, thinking it would be $500 or $1,000. He said $50.
"I said $50 a month? He said $50 a year," she said. "If I gave you a check right now, when could these kids start school?" she asked. Right away, he told her.
"I wrote him a check for $100. The intent at that time was for me to give him $50 a month. I figured that was the least I could do for free Swahili lessons," she said.
She pledged to help 15 youngsters get educations. But the price of gasoline went up and money was tight. She already was collecting bottles and cans on her mail route for an older couple living on Social Security, she said. Neighbors also were helping them.
So she decided to expand collections, told neighbors and friends what she wanted to do and, she said, Cans for Kids in the Congo was born. Started in October last year, it soon was paying for three youngsters to go to school. It has continued to grow, she said. Last month Cans for Kids paid for the education of 15 youngsters and next year she is aiming for 60, she said.
She said she has spoken to people at the Brimfield Flea Market which is held three times a year, with 20 fields and 5,000 dealers and which draws more than a half million people. The people she has talked to have committed to giving Cans for Kids all their bottles and cans, she said. Organizations also have been asking her to speak about the Cans for Kids project.
The D.R.C. has been devastated by war for the last 12 years, Father Musande wrote in support of Ms. Brouillette's campaign. The country's social sector has collapsed and the people are impoverished. Few families can send their children even to elementary school. School enrollment and education levels have dropped dramatically.
He wrote that sponsoring the education of a child not only will redeem that child from ignorance but "put into place the building blocks of a new Congo. In fact, who will rebuild the Congo if not the Congolese themselves? Sponsoring a child in the Congo is all about benefitting the whole country as well as helping individual children; raising awareness to wider problems in the country as well as contributing to finding solutions."
He praised Ms. Brouillette for realizing that redeeming 1,000 soda cans in the United States for $50 can pay the cost of sending a Congolese child to school.
*Printed by the Catholic Free Press.
Fr. Salvator Musande A.A.'s Visit To The Milford Catholic Elementary School
Milford Catholic Elementary School's Pledge to the Congo
When school began this year, Mrs. Andrea Tavaska, the principal of Milford Catholic Elementary School, was inspired by an article in the Catholic Free Press about children in the Congo who do not attend elementary school because their families cannot afford it. The article and accompanying picture of the children tugged at her heart strings. A Congolese priest, Father Salvatore Musande, A.A. who is working on his Master’s Degree at Assumption College in Worcester, has started a program to help provide scholarships for these children to attend school. Mrs. Tavaska charged the MCES Student Council with an assignment – adopt this great cause!
During Catholic Schools Week, the Student Council sponsored a “Breakfast for the Congo,” along with a dress-down day. Many families and staff joined us before school on a cold winter morning for hot chocolate and donuts. We were able to send $234 to Father Musande for “his” kids, hopefully helping up to five of them attend school.
On March 25, 2011 Father Salvator Musande, A.A. visited MCES to speak to the students. Along with showing a poignant slideshow of the children and their homes and schools made from mud and grass, he spoke of the hardships these young children had to endure – torn clothing, no shoes, no toys, and only one meal a day. The students listened attentively as he shared his own story of the way his father took him from his village to a better place where he could finish school, since the dropout rate in his village was so high. Father explained that this is the reason he is so passionate about helping the children in his Congo village. He ended his presentation by expressing sincere gratitude for the money raised by the MCES students. It was a touching presentation that left all the children realizing how lucky they are and, thus, wanting to continue supporting this worthwhile cause.
*Printed by the Assumptionists.
HOLLAND - Some people think little, if nothing at all about tossing that empty soda can into the recycling bin, or even worse, the trash. Others return empty bottles and cans to their local redemtpion centers. And a few takes those nickel-apiece recyclables and change the world.
Lynne Brouillette of Holland has, in the last year, has turned refundable beverage containers into a year's worth of schooling for 15 children in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
"I spent 12 years in the Army and I've lived all over the world." Brouillette, now a mail carrier, said from her route yesterday.
A dedicated member of St. Anne's parish in Sturbridge, Brouillette devotes much of her time to homeless and impoverished people in our immediate area.
"I want to do mission work somewhere outside the United States when I retire, which is fast approaching." Brouillette continued, explaining how her Cans for Kids in the Congo campaign got started.
The catalyst for the campaign was a chance meeting between Brouillette and the Rev. Salvator Kasareka Musande, an Assumptionist priest originally from the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
While discussing taking Swahili lessons from Musande, Brouillette learned that covering the basic cost of an education for a Congolese child was well within the realm of her ability.
According to Musande, it costs only $50 per year for basic educational services for one child.
"The Congo has been a country at war and conflict for several years," Musande said, "From the beginning, I mean from independence, it has been misruled."
The Democratic Republic of the Congo has in fact been ravaged by regional wars with rebel factions from neighboring Rwanda and Uganda, as well as sporadic civil war for two decades.
"The situation is still very complicated," Musande said. "People are very poor, people live on less than a dollar per day."
"Since the early '90s, the government has not paid teachers, so the parents have to support the school system themselves," Musande continued. "African families have an average of six or seven children, and that adds to the problem."
Brouillette's mission now, is to put as many of those children through school as she can.
By collecting donations of bottles and cans along her mail route, she has been able to fund a year of schooling for 13 students in addition to two she personaly sponsored outright.
Most recently however, Brouillette discovered an untapped resource to help her recyclable-only fundraising effort: the Brimfield Flea Market and Antique Show.
"I just got all the recyclables I could possibly find," she said of the show that concluded this past weekend, "I'll be there again in July I'll be there again in September," she added.
All together, Brouillette said the three shows may generate enough money to quadruple the number of students she can sponsor, now looking to have 60 students in school next year.
An additional aspect to the Cans for Kids in the Congo program is to follow each student as they progress throug the grades, sponsoring them each year until they graduate from high school.
"Those who do [go to school], do not have assurance that they will finish their education because sometimes their parents cannot afford to continue to send their children to school," Musande said. "We would not be happy to start with some kids then after two or three years we are unable to help them go forward."
Since Brouillette and Musande went public with their program, which now includes a Web site www.kidsinthecongo.com that was created pro bono, they have been met with generous fervor.
"The way it grew and the way its been embraced by people has absolutely amazed me," Brouillette said.
Besides picking up donations while on her route and accepting regular contributions from B.T.'s Smokehouse and Hooyas REstaurant, BRouillette received some help from Southbridge students willing to help other kids their age, on the other side of the world.
The National Honor Society of Mary E. Wells Junior High held a can drive recently, during which the fundraisers actually decided to split their donation between Cans for Kids in the Congo and the Interfaith Hospitality Network, which helps struggling families in Southbridge.
The initiative taken by the students conducting the fundraisers, Brouillette said, changed the entire way her fundraisers are conducted.
"The kids came up with connecting poverty and homelessness in the U.S. with poverty and homelessness in the Congo," she said. "From this point on, every single group that wants to do a fundraiser for us, we want them to pick a local charity and give 50 percent to them and 50 percent to us."
No matter how big the donation though, or how many charities a fundraiser is held for, Musande said every cent going to the Congo carries incredible weight.
"It is a very, very big contribution," he said. "I believe this is the future of the country. If kids can make it through high school, I think there is a future. I believe strongly in education as a key to any kind of improvement in society."
To contribute to the Cans for Kids in the Congo campaign, arrangements can be made for pick up of refundable recyclables by contacting Brouillette at (413) 209-6526 or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . Volunteers willing to help with redemption of the bottles and cans can also contact Brouillette. Monetary donations can be sent to St' Anne's care for Cans for Kids in the Congo, at 16 Church St. Fiskdale, 01518.
News staff writer Christopher Tanguay may be reached at (508) 909-4132, or by e-mail at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .
*Printed in the Southbridge Evening News Newspaper, May 26, 2009.
By William T. Clew Lynne Brouillette of Brimfield delivers mail for the United States Postal Service. And she collects cans and bottles to send youngsters to school in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (D.R.C.) in central Africa.
The only thing that one has to do with the other is that some of the people on her mail route in Sturbridge, Brimfield, Holland and Wales save their bottles and cans for her. She does not pick them up while she's delivering mail, but does so afterwards, or has helpers pick them up, she said.
She picks them up every couple of weeks, she said. She cashes them in, gets a check and sends it to Father Ephrem Kapitula, an Assumptionist stationed in Butembo, D.R.C. Father Kapitula uses the money to pay the cost of schooling for youngsters picked by the local parish, Ms. Brouillette said.
People who know about her project have been helping her. In addition to the contributions from people on her mail route, a couple of businesses in Brimfield - Yahoo's and B.T. Smokehouse - also save cans and bottles for her.
The confirmation class at St. Anne and St. Patrick Parish in Sturbridge responded by raising $149.65 last January. She made a presentation to pupils at Wells Middle School in Southbridge and they plan a can drive in school May 13-15 and have scheduled a can collection from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. May 16 at Yankee Spirits in Sturbridge.
Velvet Green Garden Center on Route 20 near the Sturbridge-Brimfield town line has agreed to be a drop-off center for cans, Ms. Brouillette said.
Joseph Pagano of Pagano Media in Worcester met Ms. Brouillette at a meeting of a group of friends of the Augustinians of the Assumption who often discuss ways in which lay people can aid the work of the religious order. When he heard about Cans for Kids in the Congo he said he would sponsor its Web site. People will be able to call up the Web site, www.kidsinthecongo.com, beginning May 20, she said. Those wishing more information before that date may call Ms. Brouillette at 413-209-6526 or e-mail This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . or Father Musande at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .
Why would Ms. Broullette, a single mother of two teenagers, a Springfield College graduate who spent nearly 12 years in the U.S. Army, wind up collecting cans to send Congolese children to school?
Well, there's a bit of a story there. She is a member of St. Anne and St. Patrick Parish in the Fiskdale section of Sturbridge. The Assumptionists serve that parish.
When two children, Brittany, 17, and Bobby, 14, finish school in a few years, Ms. Brouillette said she wants to retire. She said she wanted to do some kind of missionary work with the Assumptionists in Australia.
There was one little problem. There are no Assumptionists in Australia. There are Assumptionists in Africa. So, she said, "goodbye Australia, hello Africa."
When she told a friend, Cathy Banks of St. Anthony de Padua Parish in Dudley, of her retirement plans, Ms. Banks told her she should meet Father Salvatore Musande, an Assumptionist from the D.R.C., who has been at Assumption College in Worcester for more than two years. A short time later she met him when he spoke at a novena at her parish.
She said she was impressed with Father Musande's command of English and with his patience answering her questions about the D.R.C. Somewhere in the course of the conversation, she said, she asked him to teach her Swahili. Swahili, or Kiswahili as it sometimes is called, is the language of the Waswahili people who live along the Indian Ocean in southern Somalia and northern Mozambique. It also is the language of economics for many East Africans. It is also a national or official language of four nations.
It allows people who have their own separate first-language communicate with one another for business, diplomacy and other reasons.
She also asked Father Musande how someone in the United States could help a Congolese family. He said, "educate a child." She said she asked how much it would take to educate a child, thinking it would be $500 or $1,000. He said $50.
"I said $50 a month? He said $50 a year," she said. "If I gave you a check right now, when could these kids start school?" she asked. Right away, he told her.
"I wrote him a check for $100. The intent at that time was for me to give him $50 a month. I figured that was the least I could do for free Swahili lessons," she said.
She pledged to help 15 youngsters get educations. But the price of gasoline went up and money was tight. She already was collecting bottles and cans on her mail route for an older couple living on Social Security, she said. Neighbors also were helping them.
So she decided to expand collections, told neighbors and friends what she wanted to do and, she said, Cans for Kids in the Congo was born. Started in October last year, it soon was paying for three youngsters to go to school. It has continued to grow, she said. Last month Cans for Kids paid for the education of 15 youngsters and next year she is aiming for 60, she said.
She said she has spoken to people at the Brimfield Flea Market which is held three times a year, with 20 fields and 5,000 dealers and which draws more than a half million people. The people she has talked to have committed to giving Cans for Kids all their bottles and cans, she said. Organizations also have been asking her to speak about the Cans for Kids project.
The D.R.C. has been devastated by war for the last 12 years, Father Musande wrote in support of Ms. Brouillette's campaign. The country's social sector has collapsed and the people are impoverished. Few families can send their children even to elementary school. School enrollment and education levels have dropped dramatically.
He wrote that sponsoring the education of a child not only will redeem that child from ignorance but "put into place the building blocks of a new Congo. In fact, who will rebuild the Congo if not the Congolese themselves? Sponsoring a child in the Congo is all about benefitting the whole country as well as helping individual children; raising awareness to wider problems in the country as well as contributing to finding solutions."
He praised Ms. Brouillette for realizing that redeeming 1,000 soda cans in the United States for $50 can pay the cost of sending a Congolese child to school.
*Printed by the Catholic Free Press.
Fr. Salvator Musande A.A.'s Visit To The Milford Catholic Elementary School
Milford Catholic Elementary School's Pledge to the Congo
When school began this year, Mrs. Andrea Tavaska, the principal of Milford Catholic Elementary School, was inspired by an article in the Catholic Free Press about children in the Congo who do not attend elementary school because their families cannot afford it. The article and accompanying picture of the children tugged at her heart strings. A Congolese priest, Father Salvatore Musande, A.A. who is working on his Master’s Degree at Assumption College in Worcester, has started a program to help provide scholarships for these children to attend school. Mrs. Tavaska charged the MCES Student Council with an assignment – adopt this great cause!
During Catholic Schools Week, the Student Council sponsored a “Breakfast for the Congo,” along with a dress-down day. Many families and staff joined us before school on a cold winter morning for hot chocolate and donuts. We were able to send $234 to Father Musande for “his” kids, hopefully helping up to five of them attend school.
On March 25, 2011 Father Salvator Musande, A.A. visited MCES to speak to the students. Along with showing a poignant slideshow of the children and their homes and schools made from mud and grass, he spoke of the hardships these young children had to endure – torn clothing, no shoes, no toys, and only one meal a day. The students listened attentively as he shared his own story of the way his father took him from his village to a better place where he could finish school, since the dropout rate in his village was so high. Father explained that this is the reason he is so passionate about helping the children in his Congo village. He ended his presentation by expressing sincere gratitude for the money raised by the MCES students. It was a touching presentation that left all the children realizing how lucky they are and, thus, wanting to continue supporting this worthwhile cause.
*Printed by the Assumptionists.
Redeeming effort on local, global scale
African relief, community program effort inspires a southbridge school.
HOLLAND - Some people think little, if nothing at all about tossing that empty soda can into the recycling bin, or even worse, the trash. Others return empty bottles and cans to their local redemtpion centers. And a few takes those nickel-apiece recyclables and change the world.
Lynne Brouillette of Holland has, in the last year, has turned refundable beverage containers into a year's worth of schooling for 15 children in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
"I spent 12 years in the Army and I've lived all over the world." Brouillette, now a mail carrier, said from her route yesterday.
A dedicated member of St. Anne's parish in Sturbridge, Brouillette devotes much of her time to homeless and impoverished people in our immediate area.
"I want to do mission work somewhere outside the United States when I retire, which is fast approaching." Brouillette continued, explaining how her Cans for Kids in the Congo campaign got started.
The catalyst for the campaign was a chance meeting between Brouillette and the Rev. Salvator Kasareka Musande, an Assumptionist priest originally from the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
While discussing taking Swahili lessons from Musande, Brouillette learned that covering the basic cost of an education for a Congolese child was well within the realm of her ability.
According to Musande, it costs only $50 per year for basic educational services for one child.
"The Congo has been a country at war and conflict for several years," Musande said, "From the beginning, I mean from independence, it has been misruled."
The Democratic Republic of the Congo has in fact been ravaged by regional wars with rebel factions from neighboring Rwanda and Uganda, as well as sporadic civil war for two decades.
"The situation is still very complicated," Musande said. "People are very poor, people live on less than a dollar per day."
"Since the early '90s, the government has not paid teachers, so the parents have to support the school system themselves," Musande continued. "African families have an average of six or seven children, and that adds to the problem."
Brouillette's mission now, is to put as many of those children through school as she can.
By collecting donations of bottles and cans along her mail route, she has been able to fund a year of schooling for 13 students in addition to two she personaly sponsored outright.
Most recently however, Brouillette discovered an untapped resource to help her recyclable-only fundraising effort: the Brimfield Flea Market and Antique Show.
"I just got all the recyclables I could possibly find," she said of the show that concluded this past weekend, "I'll be there again in July I'll be there again in September," she added.
All together, Brouillette said the three shows may generate enough money to quadruple the number of students she can sponsor, now looking to have 60 students in school next year.
An additional aspect to the Cans for Kids in the Congo program is to follow each student as they progress throug the grades, sponsoring them each year until they graduate from high school.
"Those who do [go to school], do not have assurance that they will finish their education because sometimes their parents cannot afford to continue to send their children to school," Musande said. "We would not be happy to start with some kids then after two or three years we are unable to help them go forward."
Since Brouillette and Musande went public with their program, which now includes a Web site www.kidsinthecongo.com that was created pro bono, they have been met with generous fervor.
"The way it grew and the way its been embraced by people has absolutely amazed me," Brouillette said.
Besides picking up donations while on her route and accepting regular contributions from B.T.'s Smokehouse and Hooyas REstaurant, BRouillette received some help from Southbridge students willing to help other kids their age, on the other side of the world.
The National Honor Society of Mary E. Wells Junior High held a can drive recently, during which the fundraisers actually decided to split their donation between Cans for Kids in the Congo and the Interfaith Hospitality Network, which helps struggling families in Southbridge.
The initiative taken by the students conducting the fundraisers, Brouillette said, changed the entire way her fundraisers are conducted.
"The kids came up with connecting poverty and homelessness in the U.S. with poverty and homelessness in the Congo," she said. "From this point on, every single group that wants to do a fundraiser for us, we want them to pick a local charity and give 50 percent to them and 50 percent to us."
No matter how big the donation though, or how many charities a fundraiser is held for, Musande said every cent going to the Congo carries incredible weight.
"It is a very, very big contribution," he said. "I believe this is the future of the country. If kids can make it through high school, I think there is a future. I believe strongly in education as a key to any kind of improvement in society."
To contribute to the Cans for Kids in the Congo campaign, arrangements can be made for pick up of refundable recyclables by contacting Brouillette at (413) 209-6526 or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . Volunteers willing to help with redemption of the bottles and cans can also contact Brouillette. Monetary donations can be sent to St' Anne's care for Cans for Kids in the Congo, at 16 Church St. Fiskdale, 01518.
News staff writer Christopher Tanguay may be reached at (508) 909-4132, or by e-mail at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .
*Printed in the Southbridge Evening News Newspaper, May 26, 2009.
Last Updated (Thursday, 14 July 2011 04:00)