Guest Columnist | Finding a reason for faith-based funding

I was petrified of my boss this summer.

Before I started work in May, I would spend nights lying awake worrying about what it would be like to work for her. I had never had to answer to someone like her, and I had no idea what to expect.

No, she's not a workaholic i-banker in New York. She's not a stressed-out lawyer or a cutthroat PR officer.

She's a nun.

I'm spending my summer working for Sister Margaret, a Botswana native who manages a daycare center for orphans in a village outside of Gaborone, the nation's capitol city.

She runs a tight ship, but Sister Margaret - and the experience of working for a Catholic service organization - is a long way off from the fire and brimstone I imagined.

I came upon Sister Margaret's daycare by complete chance. Penn decided to send me to Botswana, and I got placed at the Kamogelo Orphans and Vulnerable Children Project.

When the coordinator from the Office of International Programs called let me know about my job, she anxiously told me that she thought my name sounded Jewish - was I? She wasn't sure if I would want to work for a religious nonprofit.

I wasn't sure I did, either. But I wanted to help out in Botswana, and I wasn't going to miss the opportunity.

I've always been a little uneasy about faith-based charity work - or more specifically, U.S. government dollars funding it. Religious organizations do lots of good things, but there are usually strings attached.

I like to think that the taxes I pay help feed hungry people or help shelter someone who needs a safe place to stay, and it's true - religious organizations of all shapes and sizes do provide those services.

But I don't like to think that this money also asks people to pray to a god they don't believe in or teaches teenagers that condoms don't work.

The center relies on grants and cash donations, both from Botswana and abroad.

U.S. government dollars end up funding a large portion of Kamogelo's operating budget, whether it's via UNICEF or BOTUSA, the America-Botswana aid partnership.

When I ended up at Kamogelo earlier this summer, it was strange to think that maybe some of those same U.S. government funds - perhaps even my tax dollars - were paying for the cute little kids in front of me to learn to thank Jesus every time they eat.

But I'm realizing that it's not as big of a deal as I thought it would be.

Sister Margaret is tireless and patient, with an easy laugh and a sharp sense of humor. She's never rapped my knuckles with a ruler; she's nothing like the stereotypical nun I pictured before I came.

More importantly, she is doing a world of good for 127 kids in Mogoditshane, Botswana.

There are pictures of Jesus on the walls of the cafeteria and prayers written in big block letters in every classroom. Everyone sings Christian songs and wears crosses around their necks.

But that isn't what you notice when you come to Kamogelo.

You notice the happy and mischievous preschoolers who, against all the odds, are learning and growing here.

You notice the two healthy meals they eat here each day. You notice that even the kids who are HIV positive run and play with their classmates, because Kamogelo staff work to keep them on anti-retroviral treatment.

You notice that, for a place that survives in challenging circumstances, Kamogelo seems like any other school.

Kamogelo and the local Catholic Church do invaluable work here, work that nobody else is doing. It needs U.S. aid money to exist, and it deserves it.

I am still not gung-ho about government funding for any religious organization that can call itself a charity. I'm lucky the kids at Kamogelo are so young, because Sister Margaret and I won't have to discuss our very different ideas about sex education and HIV prevention. It's a fine line between faith-based groups that do aid work and those that simply proselytize.

But it's a line that deserves discussion.

It was closed-minded of me, as a liberal, to assume that no faith-based charities should get government money. If progressives are going to help fight the battles against poverty and disease, we're going to have to work with religious groups - not against them.

Mara Gordon is a College senior from Washington, D.C.. Her e-mail address is gordon@dailypennsylvanian.com

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