‘GOD CALLED ME’
Sydney River woman volunteers in India.
A Sydney River woman who has returned from India working with children is now hoping to make a difference in Cape Breton.
Jessie MacNeil, 27, is a devout Catholic who has been volunteering around the world since 2009 after travelling to the Dominican Republic on a mission with a group of volunteers. Since then she held postings in numerous countries.
Most recently, MacNeil volunteered for the second time in India at Sarah’s Covenant House, a community of familystyle foster homes that care for children and young adults with medical and special needs, doing behaviour therapy using her master’s degree in applied behaviour analysis. She first volunteered with the organization in 2012.
“I felt like God called me to go to India and he put that on my heart a few years ago, so it took me a few years to finally be open to going and when I went I had three great months,” she said.
While at Sarah’s Covenant House, MacNeil worked with 35 children in a house with special needs. Sarah’s Covenant House is home to more than 150 previously abandoned children who have been rescued from government orphanages that don’t have the ability to provide adequate care for their needs.
MacNeil was planning on staying in India for six months but returned to Cape Breton after three months in May.
“It was taking a toll on me mentally and physically because there’s so much work that needs to be done but only so many volunteers. I had very few people working alongside of me,” said MacNeil.
While at the house, MacNeil started a toy library for the children and used Amazon India to have donated toys sent directly to her. She said the children were excited every day to play with them.
“When I first got there they had very little toys and crafts supplies and stuff like that, so I took initiative” said MacNeil. “Kids here have such a variety of things to play with as where they would only have 10 things to play with but every day when the toys would come out of the cabinet. It’s just as exciting as it was the day before.”
While MacNeil was in India she was considering the possibility of fostering or adopting a special needs child from the organization but started looking into the foster care system in Nova Scotia and realized there was a need in Canada as well.
“There’s a big need for that here — not just other countries and overseas. Often times when we think of adopting we think from Africa or China or India or other countries, but there’s a lot of kids who need families here, especially because it’s special needs,” she said.
This week MacNeil started the process to be a provider of respite care to foster families in Cape Breton. Respite care is a service where qualified people take care of foster children for a period of time to alleviate some of the responsibilities that foster parents have.
Apart from her plans to eventually foster or adopt a child, MacNeil felt drawn to Cape Breton after leaving India, despite not living on the here since 2012.
She said her and other young adults have started a youth group to engage the younger generation with the Catholic church.
“It’s us, the youth and young adults, who are the future of the church. If we don’t do something now, we most likely won’t have a Catholic church in 10 years,” said MacNeil.
“We are excited to see where this takes us. We are really putting the effort into the youth ministry and young adults.”
Anyone with questions about the young adults group, can contact MacNeil at halifaxaba@gmail.com.