While education has always been the Brother's main ministry, they also involved in assisting AIDS victims and their families in Florida; prison visitation in Ghana; providing a day centre for the homeless in Englad helping on a night shelter programme in Canada.

The first school established by Edmund Rice in Waterford was in response to one of the greatest social needs of the time. The provision of primary and secondary education in many locations around the world has been the Brothers' response to similar needs.

CARE

Since 1993 the Presentation Brothers have been providing an educational programme for adolescents who have completed their primary education but are unable to secure places in secondary schools. CARE, in St. Lucia, West Indies, includes a personal development programme and a skills programme and is very successful in preparing at risk teenagers for employment and fulfillment.

ERA

Edmund Rice Action organizes summer camps in Ireland for needy primary school children. The camps are run by young adult students, associates and friends of the Brothers, in Ireland and England. Similar work is undertaken in Ghana and in Canada

Adult Education

CLEO in Cork and PCDOCS in San Fernando, Trinidad, are two Adult Education centres directed by the Presentation Brothers. In these centres courses leading to Diplomas, Masters degrees and Doctorates are provided.

School Meals Programmes

Shortly after Edmund Rice opened Mount sionschool in Waterford he built a little bakehouse to provide bread for the pupils, many of whom, through poverty, were coming to school hungry. In Peru and Ghana similar circumstances prevail today The Brothers have organized school meals programmes to cate for the needs of these children.

SHARE

Students Harness Aid for Relief of Elderly

Life for elderly people living alone on a meagre social welfare allowance can be very difficult. In the 1960s and 1970s living conditions of many elderly people in Cork, particularly those living alone on a meagre social welfare allowance, were very difficult. They lived in single-room rented bedsitters, unheated and damp, sharing toilet facilities located in outside yards with several other tenants. They barely eked out an existence, lonely, even on the verge of despair, with few to speak for them.

SHARE is an organization founded in Presentation College, Cork in 1970 to help alleviate the sufferings of the elderly poor. Students from twenty-four schools now collaborate and over 200 custom-built homes have been provided by the organization.

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