TWINNING PROGRAM 2009

Phase III

Stella Maris Centre, Santos, Brazil to Montreal seafarers centre in Canada

Stella Maris centre Swinojoustie, Poland to the newly opened Reunion SS and Stella Maris centre.

Stella Maris’ Friends centre Venice to Duckdulben International seamen’s club in Hamburg

Stella Maris centre Swinojoustie, Poland to the

newly opened Reunion SS and Stella Maris centre.February 16- March 1

Ship visiting, participating in every day life of a centre, participation in the Welfare committee meeting were the part of the visit. 2 chaplains from Poland met the Mayor of the city, Bishop, representatives of sea agencies and shipping companies.

Several Holy Masses were organized by them together

withAlain Djeutang And other staff

members in different parts of the island.

At the end of the visit there was a press conference during which the local Mass Media highlighted the activity of the centre in Reunion and its ties with the Polish centre. We always recommend to organize such events which proved to be very beneficial first of all for the host centre because they provide publicity for them.

Of course the Polish guests shared their experience in the newly opened centre, and Alain in his turn explained his methods of fund raising he’s very proud of and as he told, he would be

happy to receive another twin partners to share the experience.

April 19- May 1 – 2 staff members

from Stella Maris Centre, Santos, Brazil paid a return visit to Montreal Seafarers centre in Canada

. Ship visiting, meeting with the board of directors, port authorities, cooperation with the ITF inspector, meeting with the city authorities, ecumenical work

were included into their visit.

Samuel Fonseca and Rev Adelar Schunke learned from the Canadian experience of volunteer work, cooperation with the local authorities.

“The good relationship with port authorities surprised me. Here we are trying to contact and involve port authorities in the seafarer’s

welfare assistance but it has not been easy, we had some meetings but with few results.” Fr. Adelar Shlunke

The issues that are discussed now in Santos: To reduce burocracy to get authorization for a new worker

to go to the ship To get permissionto take on board telephone cards for seafarers We are planning to change the location of some services in

the centre according to the Montreal example.

The central administration of the seafarers centre is some thing very good. Here in Santos now the relationship with Fr. Samuel is better. In the beginning it was quite difficult to manage work together. I think the experience in Montreal helps also in this way and show us that it is necessary be very flexible to work together.

At the present moment the staff member from Stalla Maris’ Friends Venice is working at the Duckdulben International seamen’s club, Hamburg. Two big ports

dealing with plenty of passenger vessels appeared to have absolutely different modes of work. Venice experience in this area appeared very interesting for their German colleagues.

As Jan Ottomans said “We’d like to know how they manage to deal with that big amount of people a day we deal for a month”.

That’s why the visits were planned for a spring time before the cruise season starts.

Beside every day activities they are going to visit other seafarers centres in the area, to meet the local officials, to participate in the church service on boat of the river mission, and meet the Mass media people.

2 staff members from Venice will go to Germany not at a time, but one after another which reduces the problems connected with

the staff shortage in their own centre.

PROGRAMMES DELAYEDDue to the recession, personnel shortage

and other financial problems some centres have postponed their planned visits. 2 visits of the German Seamen’s mission form Bremen haven, Germany to Seafarers’ Friend centre, Portsmouth, USA and back were postponed .

The return visit of the staff members from Colombo Flying Angel club to Mission to seafarers, Halifax, Canada was postponed as well due to the personnel shortage.

During our last meeting we also suggested to have more inter- regional visits between centres within the same geographical area which should reduce travel costs and encourage more contact between struggling and more successful centres to share their experience in their home setting.

Now we are discussing the participation of 2 centres from India - Drop in centre facility in the port of Kandla to Singapure drop in centre and the MtS centre in Tuticorin to South Africa, Durban.

We discussed the participation of some centres from Australia with Dennis Claughton. I was told that they had already tried to organize something like experience exchange within their area to let the more successful centres show their methods of work. But the shortage of funds became a very serious obstacle for the implementation of this idea. Now if we make this exchange within the twinning program frame, they will be happy to go on with this idea.

We are planning to extend the program to Australia and to involve in it more centres from Africa.

Hopefully this year more centres will be able to participate and thus to improve welfare activities in their ports and centres.