Paul Calvert spoke with Father Mamdoor

The School of Joy was founded in 1993 in Beit Sahour, the town of the shepherds. The school was started to help improve the overall quality of life for students who have low academic achievement in the greater Bethlehem area. To find out about their current successes and challenges, Paul Calvert spoke with Father Mamdoor who runs the school.

Father Mamdoor: The School of Joy is for slow learners in the Bethlehem region. We are trying to help the students who are neglected in the streets. They are not accepted in the normal schools and they need special education.

Paul: Is it easy to work with disabled children in Beit Sahour?

Father Mamdoor: It's not easy, it's very difficult. They need special care and special teachers to meet the students' needs.

I am taking this responsibility in order to reduce the responsibility on the parents' shoulders and on society as well. This is the only school in the region taking care of such students.

Paul: We know there are financial problems in the Palestinian Authority so do you get money from the government to run this school?

Father Mamdoor: Not at all. We just take a licence from the Minister of Education to have the school, because we need to have these papers when we transfer the students from a normal school to our school, or visa versa. They cannot support us financially at all, because they have a deficit in their normal schools. If they can't run their normal schools, how can they run a special school?

Paul: How do you get finances to run the school?

Father Mamdoor: We depend on God. Every day, first we pray for that. Sometimes we don't have the pay for the salary, but every day as we believe in God's word, he will never forget us, because we are doing this. We see Jesus Christ in the faces of the children. We have some donors and for each student we have sponsorship.

The biggest difficulty is to find sponsorship for the new students. We always have new students. We have 54 students at the moment, but only sponsorship for 28 students. We still need to find sponsors for the rest. We call people and ask them to work with us and rather than adopting a cat or a dog, adopt a human, because firstly we have to take care of each other. We want to give the rights to the children to be educated and to survive with their human rights. When I think about it, I don't think its right when I see people looking after cats and dogs, but not taking care of the people who are without food, without clothes and education. We need people to think about making children happy, to put the smile on the faces of the children. That's why I call the school the School of Joy; to make the students joyful and happy and to also make the parents joyful.

I remember a father of a boy who brought his child to the school; he was about seven years old. He said that he wished that he didn't have this child; he's destroying their lives. We don't know what to do with this boy; he's spoiling all the life of the family. Everyone in the family was in good health except this one. He is retarded, we can't deal with him. I said ok, put him in this school and we will see how we can help you. We had many sessions with the parents to accept the child the way that God created him and afterwards they started looking after the child. They gave him love and care. They never used to give him good food or clothes. Now he was very clean and tidy and obeying his parents and obeying us in the school.

He couldn't carry on his education because he was a slow learner, so we opened a factory for olive wood to teach them to carve olive wood. This boy now learned and he liked to work, so he was gaining money now for this work. I remember when his dad went to Jerusalem to work without permission and the Israeli army caught him without permission to cross the border, so they prevented him from coming back to work. His dad sat at home; now this boy is supporting the whole family from the olive wood and now his dad changed his mind and said, "How I thank God that you gave me this boy."

If we remember at the beginning what he said, "God I wish that you didn't give me this boy" and now he is thanking God that He gave him this boy and he's now taking care of the whole family; he's now very happy. He found out the wisdom of God for giving him this child. He was the most neglected one, now he's the most important one in the family. He's taking care of the father, the mother and another two, a brother and sister. We really should thank God for this. We really succeeded to put the smile and make everyone happy. Everyone is joyful at School of Joy.

Paul: You talked about it not just being a school, but also a woodwork factory. What sort of things do you do in the woodwork factory?

Father Mamdoor: When we thought about teaching them a profession, we thought about work in our tradition. Olive wood is from our tradition and most of the people here depend on this work. We decided to open a workshop for olive wood because we have many tourists who come to the Holy Land, so they can buy presents and souvenirs from the Holy Land.

It is easy to sell it because when we produce something we have to sell it in order to keep the students working first and to pay them, then to help support the school, the running costs and to buy raw materials again.