Brother Ken, thank you

Dear Ken,

As you conclude your term as President of FMSI in October 2025, we write with deep gratitude for eight years of vision, courage, and patient guidance. This closing chapter of your service meaningfully coincides with a milestone for our Foundation: on 24 October, FMSI will mark 18 years of Solidarity and Child Rights. The date is significant: it is United Nations Day, commemorating the entry into force of the UN Charter on 24 October 1945—a moment to recall the UN’s values of peace, cooperation, and respect for human rights. That our anniversary and your farewell converge on this date highlights the path you have helped trace for FMSI: a Marist foundation deeply engaged with the UN, steadfast in child rights, and firmly oriented to Global Marist Solidarity.

In these 8 years together, between 2018 and 2025, FMSI supported more than 300 Marist projects in over 40 countries, mobilizing over €10 million in project funding. While our partnership base has expanded to 30+ funding partners worldwide and dozens of implementing allies across every region, we have extended collaboration to the other congregations of the Marist Family, strengthening unity in service. 

Your guidance has borne fruit in concrete works that continue to change lives. It would take several pages to list them all, but we certainly must mention the multiple projects sustained in Bolivia, Nigeria, and Malawi; Emergency and recovery support in Syria, Lebanon, DRC and Haiti; new Marist schools built in Madagascar, Cameroon, Liberia, Ivory Coast, Ghana and East Timor; two hostels for girls in Bangladesh. Strategic interventions such as New Horizons (2019–2023) across 21 schools in the Province of Southern Africa; ongoing, concrete support to both Fratelli projects (Lebanon & Colombia) and to the LaValla School in Cambodia.

We now have a new Kindergarten in Mozambique, and the first drinkable water plant in Maicao serving hundreds of kids.

You have insisted—by word and example—that Solidarity and Child Rights must walk hand in hand. Increasingly, our initiatives empower children with leadership skills and youth-led advocacy, bridging grassroots efforts with UN policymaking for greater impact. You inspired us to stand with those without privilege and to give voice to those whose voices go unheard, ensuring that dignity and participation are non-negotiable. Together with the Secretariat of Solidarity-CMI and CCIG, we have strengthened advocacy through UN mechanisms and made child participation a defining mark of our mission in all our UPR reports and oral statements.

Thanks to your emphasis on Mission Capacity Development, FMSI has intensified support for governance, financial accountability, strategic planning, and project design. Since 2022, our project management training has reached 400+ participants in 24 countries. Capacity building remains a priority, with continuous training in child protection, financial accountability, and advocacy. Under your encouragement, FMSI has taken a leading role in networking and events on child rights. Since 2023, 20 November has become a landmark date for the Institute, marked by global actions. We continue to collaborate with BICE, Edmund Rice, La Salle Brothers, FOCSIV, and Child Rights Connect, and in 2023 FMSI joined the New York NGO Forum—expanding our presence and voice.

Emergency response has remained a core focus with dozens of emergency interventions and helping to manage the Global Marist Family Fund, allocating €134,283 to nine emergency projects in seven countries in 2024 and 40.000€ to 3 emergency projects in 2 countries in 2025. Between 2020 and 2025, the Fund reached 58.317 beneficiaries, distributing 685.597,03 € across 53 projects in 30 countries.

You consistently believed in continuous qualifying training for FMSI staff—investing in language proficiency and academic formation—so that our service would be ever more professional, credible, and effective.

Looking ahead, the FMSI Strategic Plan 2026–2034—presented to the Board in December 2024—builds on these achievements to advance child rights through advocacy, fundraising, and technical support. It reinforces our role in developing strategic programs and training in project management, while sustaining financial accountability, strategic planning, and budgeting as hallmarks of our service. Capacity building remains a priority, with continuous training in child protection, financial accountability, and advocacy.

You have helped us lift our gaze: from projects to programs, from activities to impact, from goodwill to strategy. You have also helped us bend low: to listen, to accompany, and to learn—especially from children and young people who are not simply beneficiaries, but protagonists of their own future. And you have reminded us that our Marist Charism is not a memory, but a living vision—vital, contemporary, and urgently needed in a fractured world.

For this, and for much more that cannot be captured in a letter, thank you.

As we open the next chapter, we carry forward the legacy you leave with us: a clearer sense of purpose, a wider family of partners, and a deeper conviction that the Marist way of solidarity—rooted in child rights, participation, and justice—will continue to bear fruit.

Be assured that your example will keep inspiring us. We will not stop here—we will continue serving the Institute and all children with steady integrity, commitment, and enthusiasm. May the Good Mother accompany your journey.

With fraternal gratitude,

The Staff of FMSI