Editors’ Note: To commemorate the 75th anniversary of the founding of CNEWA’s operating agency in the Middle East, Pontifical Mission for Palestine, each edition of the magazine in this year of multiple anniversaries will feature at least one article on this special endeavor of the Holy See in the Middle East.

In the September edition, we feature a report on Beit Mariam, a center for vulnerable girls, located on the periphery of Amman, Jordan. Founded and operated by the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary, the center offers girls a safe place to grow in knowledge, friendship and faith.

Each afternoon at Beit Mariam begins with an embrace. Sister Rabha Kayrouz, F.M.M., and her colleague Lorice Haddad open their arms wide to the 18 girls who arrive excited to share stories about their day.

Beit Mariam (House of Mary) is an after-school center situated in al Hashmi al Shamali, a low-income neighborhood east of the Jordanian capital, Amman.

The center welcomes Christian girls from the area five days a week and offers a safe space dedicated to education and personal growth through tutoring, psychosocial support and religious instruction.

“Have we all washed our hands?” asks Sister Rabha over the girls’ cheerful chatter. A hymn is sung, a prayer is said, and lunch is served.

Sister Rabha, the center’s director and a member of the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary, sits next to 10-year-old Sahar Khoury, encouraging her to have a few more spoonfuls of rice and meat.

Al Hashmi al Shamali is a diverse neighborhood, home to Christian and Muslim refugees from Palestine, Iraq and Syria. A main commercial street leads to narrow alleyways. Fresh laundry hangs to dry behind the barred windows of overcrowded apartment buildings, originally built as public housing for soldiers. Goats graze on meager vegetation and plastic trash bags, and at times nibble on broken olive branches children will give them. A herder stands at a corner, selling goat milk for 1 Jordanian dinar ($1.41) per quart.

Last year, with more than one-third of Jordanians living below the poverty line, the World Bank reclassified Jordan as a lower-to-middle income status country. Many of the girls at Beit Mariam, whose fathers are mainly day laborers and whose mothers are largely unemployed, belong to this demographic.

“The core problems we tackle on a daily basis are poverty and ignorance,” says Sister Rabha.

She speaks of the consequences of poverty on girls: vitamin deficiencies in the absence of a balanced diet, health problems due to the inability of families to cover health care, cramped housing and conflict in the home.

“Girls are more overlooked within families, while boys are more likely to be encouraged,” she adds. “We chose to focus on those left behind.”

Sister Rabha’s biological sister, Sister Wardeh Kayrouz, F.M.M., founded Beit Mariam in 2011. One day, while on her regular visits with neighborhood families, she saw a Christian girl burning paper to bake a potato. This sight prompted her to start an apostolate for vulnerable Christian girls. Sister Wardeh has since moved to Lebanon, but Beit Mariam continues in the same house the local bishop donated at its start.

Christians make up 3 percent of the total population in Jordan; the rest is predominantly Sunni Muslim. Norig Neveu, a historian with the French Institute of the Near East, researches religious issues in the country. While Jordan has a “very rich Christian bourgeoisie” and “historically, large Christian merchant families played an intellectual role in the construction of the Jordanian state,” she says, “there is significant poverty in part of the existing Christian population, among both Christian refugees and Jordanians.”

“Open your grammar book,” Raghad Hijazeen instructs one girl while explaining to another how to calculate surface area. Ms. Hijazeen, a teacher at Beit Mariam, helps the six girls seated around her with patience and individual attention.

Farah Haddad, 13, who started attending Beit Mariam a year ago, says the tutoring at the center — where adults “are strict regarding our studies but caring” — is useful.

“I understand at school, but I need someone to help while I am doing my homework. My average was 60.4 percent when I arrived, and now it is 80 percent,” she says.

The girls also receive guidance through difficult situations. Soul Hijazeen, 15, says a girl was bullying her at school.

“Sister Rabha told me to be more self-confident and not to mind her,” she recalls.

Maya Qaqish, 13, says she feels “stronger” having found supportive adults at Beit Mariam. “I am shy, and I am working on myself to get better at relationships,” she says.

Lorice Haddad started working as the supervisor at Beit Mariam eight years ago. Upon retiring from a long career as a secretary, she realized her monthly pension of 120 dinars ($170) was insufficient to support her family and repay her husband’s loans.

“It is a small salary, but it is a gift from God to be working with this team,” she says. “Our biggest challenge is to give the girls the strength to face their lives.”

The center provides clothing and covers tuition and health care costs for the girls in greatest need. Ms. Haddad communicates these needs to the seven Christian women on Beit Mariam’s elected board, who try to meet the requests.

“Prioritizing the needs is hard. In some homes, there is nothing: no stove, no carpets,” she says. “The girls depend on God, and after God they depend on me.”

Amani Masadeh, a nutritionist by training, joined Beit Mariam as a teacher a year ago.

“I had imagined poverty-stricken children, but when I arrived, I only saw cute girls wearing nice clothes,” she says. “Gradually, I realized that they seem to do well on the outside, but on the inside, it is a completely different story.

“In some homes, there is no mother to ask the girls if they are happy,” she says. “When they are upset, I show them that I am listening. This is efficient: They focus more on their homework, and they achieve things.”

The center’s holistic approach seems to pay off. Just last year, three girls learned to read, one alumna was admitted to university and two graduated with university degrees.

Increasing literacy rates among vulnerable girls is among the goals of the center. In March, the government released statistics indicating a decrease in illiteracy among women, from 9.5 percent in 2015 to 7.3 percent.

“Their education is their future,” says Sister Rabha.

Of the 200 girls the center has welcomed since its inception, about 30 completed higher education. Most married without going to university, and some did not complete high school, says Ms. Haddad.

Sister Rabha points out that if Beit Mariam did not exist, these girls “would either be at home or on the streets.” She says a verse in the Gospel of Mark (2:17) often comes to mind when reflecting on her work: “Jesus heard this and said to them, ‘Those who are well do not need a physician, but the sick do. I did not come to call the righteous but sinners.’ ”

The unemployment rate for women in Jordan is almost twice as high as it is for men. While government statistics indicate the overall unemployment rate stands at 21.4 percent, this statistic jumps to 35 percent among women.

Reem Aslan is a gender specialist for the International Labor Organization’s Regional Office for Arab States and manages its Decent Work for Women Program in Jordan. She notes multiple reasons for this disparity.

“There are more women graduating from university than men, however their skills often don’t match the job market’s needs,” she says. The high cost of transportation, family responsibilities and cultural norms for women present additional limitations.

“Women cannot work long hours because they still carry more of the unpaid work” of caring for the home, she says.

Beit Mariam provides employment for five women from the local community.

For Ms. Masadeh, the nutritionist, becoming a teacher at Beit Mariam was a rare opportunity compatible with her household duties.

“I am waiting for my daughters to grow up to get a full-time job,” she says. In the meantime, her salary of 180 dinars ($250) helps pay for some basic needs.

The economic hardships plaguing this community are expected to persist due to the conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza and its regional consequences. U.N. agencies noted last November that the conflict will add “many economic pressures in Jordan, including low growth, high unemployment and informality, water scarcity” and subsequent calls for reform.

On a hot afternoon in June, the girls at Beit Mariam take a break to plant flowers in the center’s covered garden. Sister Rabha explains why she decided to install the corrugated steel roof.

“Children from the neighborhood were throwing rocks over the wall into the courtyard, shouting, ‘Christians!’ I got scared that a girl would be hurt.”

In principle, there is no discrimination against Christians in Jordan. The constitution indicates that Islam is the state religion but guarantees “the free exercise of all forms of worship and religious rites,” according to the U.S. State Department.

“Many initiatives regarding interfaith dialogue exist,” says Ms. Neveu, the historian. “There is a lot of control over discourse that would separate Christians from the rest of the society.”

Ra’ed Bahou, director of CNEWA-Pontifical Mission’s regional office in Amman, says while the Christian population in many Middle Eastern countries is dwindling, “Jordan is the exception.”

“The community is getting bigger with Christians from Iraq, Syria and the Philippines,” he says.

Despite state guarantees and a growing Christian community, some Christians perceive their daily reality differently.

Ms. Hijazeen, the teacher, is Roman Catholic and has been living in al Hashmi al Shamali for almost two years. “Here, people are used to living with one another,” she says. “However, some people call us ‘infidels.’ ”

Ms. Neveu says “these discriminatory comments and behaviors do not match” her research over the past 18 years and are likely “linked to a specific context in the neighborhood.”

Still, some Christian parents, like Walaa Qaqish, opt to send their children to a private Christian school for fear that their children will be bullied or persuaded to convert to Islam in a government-run school.

Ms. Qaqish is among 15 parents who come to Beit Mariam on Friday afternoons for parenting workshops. They learn about child stressors, such as academic pressure, financial hardship, overcrowding and violence, as well as how to create a healthier home.

According to a national study conducted by UNICEF in 2019, 73.9 percent of family caregivers in Jordan had used violence to discipline their children at least once.

“My husband and I don’t miss any of these meetings,” says Ms. Qaqish. “I realized there were things I was doing wrong, and — praise be to God — now I will change this. With my 2-year-old son, I can do right from the beginning.”

She recognizes the positive impact Beit Mariam has had on her daughter Maya, who “was scared of people” and would not speak with anyone.

“She developed a tick due to stress,” says Ms. Qaqish. “Since the day Maya started coming here, she has been improving. Her personality has changed more than her grades.”

She tells her children to run off and play before describing her family’s hardships: “We have two rooms in the house, one for my mother-in-law, and one for me, my husband and our three children.” The family is carrying a large debt due to private school tuition.

Mushira Abdallah, Soul’s mother, appreciates the changes the parenting workshops have brought about in her family, too. “I used to give orders to my children, now there is a dialogue,” she says.

She also shares their financial struggles. Her husband’s monthly salary, 250 dinars ($353) — below the national minimum wage of 260 dinars — is their sole source of income and insufficient to cover necessities. The annual tuition for their three daughters at the private school is the equivalent of five months’ salary. In debt to the private school, the couple enrolled their daughters in a government-run school for the new academic year.

For their daughter Soul, starting at a new school was not the only big adjustment this August.  Having completed grade 9, she aged out of the program at Beit Mariam — where “truly everything is positive,” she says — and can no longer attend.

Contemplating this fact in the courtyard at Beit Mariam in June, a shadow fell across the young girl’s face. Seeing this, Sister Rabha jumped in.

“You could come back after grade 12 and teach here,” she offered. “Would you like that?”

And Soul’s eyes lit up again.

Read this article in our digital print format here.