About Us Whom we are

Congregation of the Servants of Charity is a Religious congregation of Priests and Brothers, a Clerical Institute of Pontifical Right founded in Italy by St. Louis Guanella at the end of the 19th century.

The congregation is the proprietor of Don Guanella Rehabilitation Institute for persons with disabilities, located in Owerri, Ibadan, Lagos and Abuja.

In 1989, the first Guanellian missionaries led by the then Provincial Superior of the Sacred Heart Province, Northern Italy, Don Maurizio Bianchi visited Owerri with Don Wladimiro Bogoni. The then Catholic Bishop of Owerri Diocese, Most Rev. Dr. Mark Unegbu received and hosted these early missionaries who came to do what Philip told Nathaniel “come and see” (Jn. 1:46). This visit was subsequently followed by other visits, all in preparation for the definitive arrival of the Congregation in Africa in 1992 to start this Rehabilitation institution for the disabled and mentally challenged persons in Nnebukwu, Oguta, Imo State.

Today, these early modest beginnings have borne great fruits in offering rehabilitative and assistance services to the disabled and mentally challenged persons in Nigeria through the facilities in Abuja, Imo, Lagos and Oyo States and has also extended its tentacles in starting many Rehabilitation centers for the disabled and mentally challenged persons in other parts of African nations including Ghana in 1997, Democratic Republic of Congo in 1996, and recently Tanzania in 2016.

Presently, Don Guanella Rehabilitation Institute in Nigeria runs both boarding and day-care rehabilitative assistance with these activities in its various centres such as: the special school, the physiotherapy, the speech therapy, and agricultural activities like poultry, fishery, piggery, bakery, garri production, palm oil, crop farming, etc., which serve as occupational therapy for our mentally challenged pupils and as a means of sustenance for the centre.