The Volunteer Missionary Movement 1969-2020 - A Short History

Martin Desforges

The Volunteer Missionary Movement (VMM) trained, placed and supported well over 2500 volunteer lay missionaries to work in Africa, Central and South America and Southeast Asia in a variety of roles in education, health and social services, diocesan and community development, including a number of people from the Diocese of Hallam. A recently published short history of VMM written by Martin Desforges and Mark Wiggin is now available.

This short history of Voluntary Missionary Movement 1969-2020 offers a comprehensive analysis of a unique laity-led missionary organisation and offers a new and important contribution to Catholic missionary history in the late 20th Century. It has been written to preserve and celebrate the role and legacy of the Volunteer Missionary Movement that offered so many people the opportunity to live out and deepen their faith whilst serving the communities in which they lived as volunteers.

Women played a central role in the establishment and growth of VMM. Edwina Gateley was the initiator and driving force behind the rapid development of VMM during the 1970s, and she was supported by like-minded women. They provided good role models, demonstrating the important contributions lay women could make within a church dominated by a male hierarchy and an all-male clergy.

As an organisation within the Catholic church, VMM was of importance in demonstrating that a lay-led organisation for lay people could successfully play an important role in missionary work and international development. When VMM started, the teaching documents from Vatican II on the role of the laity in mission were still new, and the work of VMM provided a powerful example of what the laity could achieve. Even when the Catholic hierarchy in the U.K. were sceptical or even hostile to the idea of a lay led organisation, Missionary congregations were quick to realise the potential for the professionalism and expertise that VMs could bring to the missions, and were very supportive in providing accommodation, funding and placements for VMs.

The book's authors are informed by their long association with VMM and their experience of working as volunteers overseas. Both, Martin Desforges and Mark Wiggin, were volunteers with the Volunteer Missionary Movement. Martin worked as deputy principal at Mwenge University College, Tanzania and was a visiting member of staff at the Catholic University of East Africa. Mark was a volunteer in Uganda and has served as a trustee of VMM for many years, including as Chair of the board of trustees. He was instrumental in getting the VMM archive material moved to the Mill Hill Missionaries Archive and Heritage Centre in Freshfield, Lancs, UK and in starting the process of cataloguing the material.

The book is available at the price of £10 + PP, and all profits will go to help maintain and develop the VMM Archive held at the Mill Hill missionary Archives, Freshfield UK.

Email contact Martin Desforges Desforges@blueyonder.co.uk & Mark Wiggin m.wiggin@btinternet.com

Phone Mark on 07921 211961, Martin 07746752052 for more information and to order copies of the book