Sr Orla Treacy
It’s hard to imagine a part of the world further from Ireland than South Sudan in central Africa. The country, which gained independence in 2011, has experienced both war and famine in recent years.
But in Rumbek, a town in the centre of the country, a girls’ boarding school in the Loreto tradition is run by an Irish nun who has made her home there.
For Sr Orla Treacy, educating the girls of South Sudan has become a life’s work. Loreto Rumbek educates one hundred girls per year across primary and secondary levels, and the school is overseen by Sr Orla, who grew up in Bray and has lived in South Sudan for seventeen years.
Sr Orla came to the Loreto sisters after a trip to India after university. “I never intended to be a missionary, but India has been a pivotal place in my life,” she explains.
“There I realised that life is immediate - it’s not about delaying. I kept thinking I’d become a sister later, but when I arrived home, I started teaching and began the process of joining the Loreto sisters.”
A second trip to India to teach put the missionary idea in her mind, and soon after, Sr Orla took up an invitation from the bishop of Rumbek to begin a girls’ boarding school there.
That was in 2006, and she has been there ever since, while South Sudan has gone through both independence and civil war. After 17 years, Sr Orla says that things are now more peaceful, and the school and its associated clinic are flourishing.
Life for girls in South Sudan is not without its complications. As Sr Orla explains, most girls do not complete their education, and over 50% are married by the age of 18.
One of the challenges for the Loreto sisters in Rumbek lies in helping communities understand the value in educating girls. “They’d say in Africa that if you educate a woman, you educate a village,” she says.
“You can see that here, because when you educate the girls, they go back to their families, and they will support their mothers and their siblings.”
To this end, Loreto Rumbek has developed an internship programme for graduating students, where successful participants have the opportunity to go on to further study in Kenya through a scholarship.
After studying things like medicine, nursing, finance, development studies or education, graduates can return to their communities and put their skills to good use.
Sr Orla’s work in South Sudan was recognised with a Presidential Distinguished Service Award in 2021, which she describes as being particularly nice as an Irish person abroad, “to feel that connection back home.”
It’s also, she points out, a great advertisement for the work she and her team do - which is reliant, after all, on the generosity of donors for funding things like scholarships.
“I think it’s a fantastic mission, and a fantastic country,” she says. “Very often South Sudan makes the media because of war or famine. But I think it's a story and a country of great hope, great struggle. When donors have the chance to invest in these young women, they're investing in giving a life, giving an education. That has an impact on a whole community.”