Have you ever heard of recycled jewellery? We hope you have, and that you're familiar with our initiative. But if not, learn the story behind this extraordinary project.
You're probably familiar with African children from media reports: dirty, half-naked, with swollen bellies. When I have the opportunity to show such photos at various events, I always ask: why is this little one's belly so big? The most common answer I hear is: because of hunger sickness. And that's basically not true. While hunger can indeed be the cause, in most cases it's due to intestinal obstruction – intestines filled with bacteria that enter the digestive tract through drinking dirty water.
For such a child, this is very painful and can even be fatal. Yes, yes, in the 21st century people still die from drinking dirty water!
When I encountered this problem eight years ago, the Secretariat for Foreign Missions of the Priests of the Sacred Heart immediately stepped in to help. We threw ourselves into a whirlwind of activities and fundraising efforts, raising funds for the construction of deep wells in Chad. Currently, most of the money for this purpose comes from individual donors. The construction of clean water sources is also supported by parishes, schools, and preschools participating in collection drives of recyclable materials organized under the ZbieramTO banner.
Among the raw materials we collect, silver and gold jewelry plays a special role. This is because it doesn't end up in collection point or on the secondary market, but is given a "second life" called Coriss – jewelry with a mission. We have been selling under this banner for five years.
As we colloquially say, at Coriss you can find the most basic devotional items, such as the Miraculous Medal of the Virgin Mary or a cross in the Dehonian version. We also offer items that combine sacred products and ornaments, for example the St. James shell. We even have one "investment" item: 50 and 100 gram silver bars (in quotation marks because we don't want to compete in the investment market—it's more of a gift type product). Recently, Coriss expanded its product range and range of aid: soy scented candles and perfumes support the maintenance of centers for blind children in Rwanda and India.
Thanks to various initiatives and thousands of generous Donors, we've already built over 400 deep wells in Chad. Each of them serves at least 300 people, so together they provide clean water for around 120,000 people! However, this is a very conservative estimate. I don't use this statistic often because, contrary to appearances, it doesn't say much. I see it more as each Coriss product sold means another glass of clean water for the extremely poor, who can't even afford access to deep water. Every Coriss parcel picked up by a courier means – symbolically – one less swollen belly for an African child.
Fr. Piotr Chmielecki SCJ
