Stories

By Ines San Martin

In many parts of the world, being a child is a fragile undertaking. To be born in mission territory often means growing up without guaranteed access to education, basic health care, or an environment that consistently protects life and dignity. In Africa alone, it is estimated that one in three children suffers from malnutrition. Globally, more than 1.4 billion children live in households surviving on less than $8.30 a day, and over 250 million children do not attend — and will never attend — school.

Faced with this reality, the Church has sustained for almost two centuries a quiet, steady, and deeply evangelical initiative: the Missionary Childhood Association (MCA), one of four Pontifical Mission Societies. Entrusted directly to the Holy Father, its mission is clear — to support the work missionaries carry out with children in these territories. Each year, the Pope himself asks the entire Church to support this effort, a reminder to all Catholics that children are “the first missionaries” when they learn to share faith and life with other children.

Thanks to this global solidarity, more than 2,600 projects supporting education, health care, evangelization, and the protection of life were sustained last year, benefiting more than four million children worldwide.  These numbers are not only first evangelization efforts, but also showcase schools that remain open, clinics that continue to operate, meals that are not interrupted, and communities that know they have not been forgotten.

What makes MCA unique among the Church’s initiatives is that it is not directed to adults. Its heart is children themselves.  The motto is clear, “children helping children.” They are not merely recipients of help; they are protagonists. From an early age, children are invited to look beyond their immediate surroundings, to discover that other children need their support, and to understand that they, too, can be missionaries.

Throughout the year, dioceses organize Masses, gatherings, camps, catechetical activities, drawing contests, school initiatives, and parish events — all adapted to a child’s language and world. Through these simple experiences, children learn something essential: faith is never lived privately. It always becomes service.

That global mission finds one of its most striking expressions in a place few would expect: the city of Dakhla, on the southern edge of the Sahara Desert.

There, surrounded by sand and silence, stands the only center in the entire region dedicated to caring for children with mental and physical disabilities. The Center for Children with Disabilities in Dakhla was founded in the year 2000 by Mohamed Fadel, a Muslim man of Sahrawi origin who knows suffering firsthand. Diagnosed with polio as a child, he was treated and educated in Spain, where he spent years in a center run by the Brothers of St. John of God. When he returned home to the Sahara, he encountered a painful reality: children with disabilities were hidden away, kept inside their homes, often viewed as a burden or even a curse, with no access to therapy or care.

He decided to act.

What began as a fragile initiative has become a true oasis of hope. The center offers weekly therapy to 80 children — boys and girls who would otherwise receive no care at all. It is a place where families find support, where children are seen, named, and treated with dignity.

From its earliest days, the center has been supported by the Catholic Church through MCA. That support has made it possible to train staff, including a speech therapist and a physiotherapist, medications, and mobility aids. It has also ensured something less tangible but just as vital: perseverance.

“The help we receive from Missionary Childhood is not just about money,” explains Oblate missionary Father Mario León Dorado, one of three priests serving in the Apostolic Prefecture of Western Sahara. “It is knowing that the Church cares about the smallest, the poorest, and the most abandoned.”

Father Mario does not minister to a thriving Christian community. In fact, there are no Christian families in the territory. The prefecture, which covers an area roughly the size of New York State, has only two parishes: one in El Aaiún, serving about twenty Christians connected to a United Nations mission, and another in Dakhla, attended mostly by sub-Saharan migrants passing through. There are no catechism classes, no baptisms, no Christian children.

And yet, the Church remains.

“Mission here is simply presence,” Father Mario says. “Staying. Accompanying. Helping.”

That presence becomes visible in places like the disability center, where MCA’s support allows the Church to serve children — the poorest of the poor — without conditions and without expectations. The director of the center frequently explains to visiting families and public officials that the assistance they receive comes from the Catholic Church around the world, through other children who pray, give, and remember them.

For families who struggle daily to care for children with disabilities, that knowledge matters. “What great news it is for these children and their families to know they are not forgotten by God,” Father Mario says. “To know that children in other countries think of them, pray for them, and help them.”

Over the years, MCA funding has helped train therapists, purchase medicines unavailable locally, provide school supplies for children at risk of dropping out, and offer direct assistance to families with no other means of support. Even small things — a pediatric scale, nutritional supplements, specialized food thickeners — have made an enormous difference.

These are not flashy or dramatic gifts. They are simple ones. But they change lives.

Each year, the Missionary Childhood Association raises and distributes funds globally — more than $14 million in 2025 alone — placing them at the disposal of the Holy Father, who ensures they are shared equitably among the Church’s 1,131 mission dioceses. All of it is rooted in the simple generosity of children helping children. Here in the United States, this effort materializes through the Mite Boxes, a long-standing tradition available to families, parishes and schools as a way to promote love for the missions in the youngest ones. These small boxes serve as a reminder to pray and sacrifice for those who are materially poorer, but primarily, for those who have yet to encounter Christ.

In a world that often measures value by efficiency or productivity, MCA’s Mite Boxes propose a different logic — one shaped by the Gospel. Coins saved with excitement. Prayers offered with simplicity. Drawings sent as signs of closeness. Small gestures that, together, become a powerful witness.

In the desert of Dakhla, that witness has taken concrete form. A center stands. Children are cared for. Families endure. Hope remains.

And Christ is present — even where His name is rarely spoken — made visible through pure love freely given.