Fr. Terry Charlton, S.J., never thought of working outside the United States, let alone in Africa. But when the thought of going to Kenya first entered his head, he said it felt like divine intervention.

“I went to Kenya just because I felt there was a need there,” Charlton said.

Now, 18 years later, the inspiration that Charlton says came from the Holy Spirit has grown into a mission to improve education in Africa, and Georgetown is playing a major role.

In December 2003, Charlton co-founded St. Aloysius Gonzaga Secondary School for HIV/AIDS orphans in the Nairobi slum of Kibera, the largest slum in sub-Saharan Africa. The school opened the following month with 35 first-year and 21 second-year students.

Charlton said that he and the school’s co-founder Joseph Oganda, the president of the Hands of Love Society, a Catholic AIDS ministry, first tried to sponsor students’ education in other schools, but realized that founding a school of their own would better help them realize their goals for the region.

The criterion for admission to St. Aloysius, a Jesuit school, is simple: Students must have lost one parent to AIDS – none have the disease themselves – and have a desire to learn, measured by a score from a standardized Kenyan primary school test. The school presently has 126 students and will graduate its first class next year.

Charlton said that he was motivated to start the school after seeing the devastating impact of the HIV/AIDS epidemic on the children of Kibera. He estimated that in Kibera alone, there are 10,000 school-age children whose lives have been affected by AIDS. He said that losing one or both parents to the disease damages a child’s chance to receive an education.

During the summers of 2004 and 2005, a group of Georgetown faculty and administrators, including Charlton’s close friend Fr. Philip Boroughs, S.J., vice president for mission and ministry, visited St. Aloysius as part of a two-week immersion program. The group has been working with Charlton since and plans to return this summer.

This week, Charlton was on campus to meet with faculty and students to discuss fundraising and volunteer efforts for St. Aloysius.

“We are pleased to know that all of the resources we develop for them go directly to the St. Aloysius School in Kibera,” Boroughs said. “Having been there, we know first hand the importance and integrity of this endeavor.”

Last fall, Georgetown sophomore Amanda Sandberg (COL ’08) founded the St. Aloysius School Fund to help raise money for the school. The group sold Christmas cards made by St. Aloysius students last semester and is currently holding a campus-wide book drive for the school’s library, collecting high-school level novels in bins placed around campus.

Sandberg said that she met Charlton last October and was moved by “his heart-grasping and inspiring words” to take part in the fundraising. Additionally, Sandberg sought successfully to gain recognition as the Corp’s official “Charity of the Month,” according to Adrian Ohmer (COL ’06), chairman of the board of directors for the Corp.

Fundraising aside, Charlton says the passion for learning he sees in each of his students is enough a measure of the school’s success.

“What really confounds me, when these students pray, they pray with such gratitude,” he said. “They make me think that I want to use my talents, my gifts, my education to the best of my abilities. We really are forming men and women for others.”