Sister Rosemary Nyirumbe; The living mother Teresa
Who is Sister Rosemary?
Sister Rosemary Nyirumbe is currently spearheading Saint Monica Girls’ Tailoring Centre in Gulu where she resides over, and a similar school in Atiak, Uganda. Here she is the overall supervisor at these schools. She does a bit of everything! She plays a role of an administrator, a teacher, a coordinator, a fundraiser, a gardener, a writer, tailor, builder and recycler as she describes herself in the social media. She is a Catholic nun whose humanitarian work has drawn the attention of high-profile supporters like Bill and Chelsea Clinton, Forest Whitaker among others. She has dedicated her life to helping young women and girls who were formerly held captive by Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) under warlord Joseph Kony.
Biography
For the last 38 years, Sister Rosemary and the other Sisters from her covenant school, the Sacred Heart of Jesus which is based in Juba, South Sudan, have answered the call to serve the least among us from the base of a violent and bloody civil war that was carried off on the northern parts of Uganda and South Sudan.
She openly defied the rebel soldiers and commanders of the Lord’s Resistance Army most of them being Joseph Kony in their 25 year reign of terror. Since the year 2002, they have helped more than 2,000 young women who were previously abducted by the rebel army or abandoned by their families.
The sister’s background
She is a hard working woman from her childhood. According to Pros for Africa, she was brought up in a village by hard working parents up to the age of ten when she went to live with her oldest sister to care for her nieces and nephews. In her teenage, Rosemary joined the Sacred Heart Sisters. She had a passion for ministry and she had a mission to give service to others in the rest of her life. Here she acquired many skills that made her set for the future. She was recruited as a midwife and surgeon assistant.
Her call to restore the lost souls
After completing her studies as a midwife and nurse, she returned to Gulu to supervise Saint Monica Girls’ Tailoring Center. It is at this school where she faced great challenges of which she was prepared for over the course of her whole life. By then, only thirty girls were studying at this school, but hundreds of people could seek shelter there during the night running from terror brought forth by the LRA incurring the school much loss. Through this school, she made a home, a shelter for girls and women whom their lives have been shattered by sexual exploitation, violence and rape. In Saint Monica's Vocational School ran by Sister Rosemary, young women can become themselves again through the comfort and security they experience. This is a tremendous accomplishment she brings to her native Uganda, a nation which is still fragile from a long time of civil war.
She has been the director of Saint Monica’s Vocational school for about fifteen years. It is a shelter to thousands of girls and young women who learns catering, tailoring among other worth learning professional accomplishments. Saint Monica’s center development partner, Pros for Africa indicates that hundreds of the girls that join the school have suffered from torture, abduction, or rape. She gets the funds for this school partially by selling the pop-tab purses selling that the students make. She writes on her face book page that, “For the last 30 years, I along with the other Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus based in Juba, South Sudan, have answered the call to serve the least among us from the heart of a bloody and violent civil war that decimated northern Uganda and South Sudan.
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