Over the past six years, Sr. Martina Leaka has helped more than 60 young people in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, find meaning in their lives and has prepared them for adulthood by training them at a center called Porter's House. There, they learn skills that enable them to be self-reliant, including sewing and baking products sold across the city.

Updated: During her decades of ministry, the Sister of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary was a champion for the collaborative form of leadership that has become indicative of LCWR and of women religious in the United States.

by Clare Nolan

NCR Contributor

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Malaysia is the destination country of thousands of migrant persons known as Rohingya, an ethnic group long settled but denied citizenship in their birth country of Myanmar. The Rohingya ethnicity implies Muslim religious identification, making them a double minority in Myanmar. This column reflects the experiences of our Good Shepherd Sisters' shelters in Malaysia, giving a small glimpse of the vast perils and occasional small victories of the human spirit told through stories.

This story appears in the LCWR 2017 and LCWR feature series.

LCWR 2017 - As hundreds of sisters in leadership gather Aug. 8-11 in Orlando, Florida, planners are looking for the meeting to be a spiritual experience, not a business meeting. As in 2016, the conference format involves contemplative dialogue; current issues to discuss include being a countercultural presence in the world, restructuring the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, addressing loss, and shaping the evolution of religious life.