‘Pater Pedro’ receives World Service Medal

Father Pedro Opeka serves the “garbage people” of Madagascar, having helped them build villages, schools, churches, and, most recently, a hospital. And because of his untiring work in helping the “poorest of poor” regain their lives and dignity, Opeka is the recipient of the 2005 Kiwanis World Service Medal.

Pater Pedro, as he is known on the island nation, “has been working as a missionary in Madagascar for 30 years, and in this time has shown superhuman commitment to its population—especially for the children and youth,” notes Herbert Egger, immediate past governor of the Austria District, which, along with the Kiwanis Club of Villach, Austria, nominated Opeka for the recognition. More than 205,000 people, Herbert adds, have benefited from Opeka’s work, which includes:

•  Helping build—brick by brick—17 villages housing more than 100,000 downtrodden people, many of them children.

•  Being the driving force behind the construction of schools throughout Madagascar. More than 12,000 students attend the schools, preparing for a national competency exam and admittance into a university.

•  Creation of “Akamasoa,” an ongoing project on the outskirts of Atananarivo, Madagascar, where there now are churches, schools, playgrounds, and housing for more than 20,000 people, 9,000 of them schoolchildren.

•  With much financial assistance from the Austria District and the Villach club, recent construction of the Akamasoa Kiwanis Austria Hospital, a facility with the potential to provide medical services for some 1 million impoverished people.

Opeka was born June 29, 1948, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, the son of Slovenian expatriates. After his school years, Opeka was trained in masonry, a skill that served him well after his ordination into the Roman Catholic order of St. Vincent de Paul in 1975 and his subsequent assignment to Madagascar in 1976. Much of Opeka’s success in Madagascar, his friends and associates stress, is due to his ability to unite the people and teach them the skills necessary to rebuild their communities—and their lives.

The World Service Medal will be formally presented during this summer’s Kiwanis International convention in Hawaii. Opeka also will receive a US$10,000 grant from the Kiwanis International Foundation.

You can read more about Opeka in a feature article to be published in the June issue of Kiwanis magazine. For more information on the World Service Medal, or about the nomination process, click here.