Congregation of the Sisters of Mercy : Works of Mercy

Education

Education is at the heart of many of our ministries and we continue to promote the cause of the poor and marginalized through a wide range of educational endeavours in both the formal school setting and in the adult setting. Many of the educational institutions are in areas where people suffer deprivation.

We have a significant number of sisters involved full-time in education as teachers and principal teachers, catechists, school managers, chaplains, home-school liaison teachers and college lecturers. Some sisters are engaged in working with street children in a social and educational setting.

Our sisters work in vocational training, passing on skills such as dressmaking, cookery and tailoring. We run commercial colleges, training young people in secretarial and computer skills. The sisters work with women and men in the field of adult literacy and the setting up of self-help programmes, recycling waste materials from the city dumps.

In Ireland, our involvement in education today is transitional as we are preparing for a future without our presence. The focus is to hand on, where possible, our schools as Catholic institutions to committed lay colleagues in the spirit of the founding intention. We are trustees or co-trustees of third level colleges, voluntary secondary schools, community schools, primary schools, special schools and pre-schools.