The Trinidad community of the Missionaries of Charity has received an award from a daily newspaper.

The local community, based in Success Village, Laventille, recently received the Trinidad Express Award of Merit – Community Group 2007.
Receiving the award on behalf of the Sisters at Express House, Independence Square, was Beatriz Ramoutarsingh, a co-worker/supporter.

Ramoutarsingh, in an acceptance speech, gave a brief history saying Albania-born Mother Teresa started the order in 1950 in India. She said the five-member community in Laventille follows Mother Teresa’s teaching of being “Messengers of God’s love, serving the poor with love and seeing Jesus in them.”

Jean De Montagnac, Beatriz Ramoutarsingh, Eddie Lue Chin and Evelyn Williams pose with the Express award.

She explained that the Sisters focus on caring for 10 elderly ladies, 12 handicapped children and two young girls. They also provide lunch for the poor through their soup kitchen, and distribute groceries and clothing to the needy.

The Sisters run a Sunday school programme and teach religion at the Laventille Composite Secondary School.

Among their other works are: music ministry at the Catholic church opposite their home, visiting the sick and bedridden, and visiting prisoners at the Port of Spain jail.

Ramoutarsingh said Christmas time is special as the Sisters, with the help of benefactors and supporters, host a Christmas party for 500 children from Laventille and environs, distribute food hampers to families in need, and to those who visit the soup kitchen.

Ramoutarsingh quoted from Mother Teresa’s speech on the occasion of her being presented with the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979: “I choose the poverty of our people. But I am grateful to receive this prize in the name of the hungry, the naked, the homeless, of the crippled, of the blind, of the lepers, of all those people who feel unwanted, unloved, uncared for throughout the society, for all the people who have become a burden to society and are shunned by everyone.”

Ramoutarsingh concluded thanking the Express for recognising the Missionaries of Charity, which she said is a community “that reaches out to those in need with humility, commitment, reverence for human life, compassion and love, contentment and gratitude, faith, tolerance, patience and honesty.”

Accompanying Ramoutarsingh at the award ceremony were fellow co-workers/supporters Evelyn Williams, Eddie Lue Chin and Jean De Montagnac.