Media CenterCarolyn Woo in Our Sunday Visitor: Funding for Natural Family Planning Vital
Our Sunday Visitor, the national Catholic weekly newspaper, will publish an article in Saturday's edition on natural family planning and how CRS uses it in our programming, written by Catholic Relief Services President & CEO Carolyn Woo. Here is an excerpt:
An ordinary calendar and a bracelet-like chain of brown and white beads hardly seem like cutting-edge technology in fighting poverty. But these simple tools that help a woman track her fertility cycle as part of natural family planning — white beads for days pregnancy is more likely and brown for less likely — are part of the antipoverty work done by Catholic Relief Services in places such as East Timor and Burundi. Why would a relief and development agency make natural family planning part of its work? Because as a Catholic organization, we see the sacredness and dignity of the human person as a foundational principle of our fight against global poverty. Natural family planning offers women in the developing world a way to space births that respects life. More time between pregnancies helps prevent mothers from dying during labor and improves the chances that babies will be born healthy and thrive.
The article goes on to note that embracing and teaching natural family planning is one way that CRS embraces the Gosepl of Life.
This is why CRS represents the U.S. Catholic community in addressing poverty and suffering around the world, including by offering natural family planning and other programs that strengthen marriages and families. One example is a program called Faithful House, a faith-based, skills-building curriculum that aims to strengthen the family through enhanced couple communication. The curriculum is currently used in 11 countries. In the past five years, CRS has supported at least 16 projects around the world that have integrated natural family planning into larger health programs, including those that focus on maternal and child health.
Read the full article in Our Sunday Visitor. Related Articles on Carolyn Woo:
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John Rivera is CRS' former communications director. He was based Baltimore, Maryland.More
