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Food Voucher System Aids Poor Palestinians
There is rarely a dull moment at Intisar Atallah's house, nestled in the sun-soaked hills of Halhoul in the West Bank. Especially on a day like today, when the 57-year-old mother of seven is entertaining a few of her grandchildren. There's not much to occupy the younger ones inside her small...More
CRS Addresses All Areas of HIV Programming
Catholic Relief Services initiated its first HIV project in 1989 in Masaka, Uganda. Today CRS supports 184 HIV programs in 35 countries, with a total expenditure of $106 million in 2012. In partnership with other faith-based and non-governmental organizations, CRS directly supports more than...More
Impossible Thanksgiving Task
If we at Catholic Relief Services were to attempt to count our blessings, we'd never get any work done. There are all the blessings we're aware of—but how often are we blessed unawares? How many times has God protected, delivered or assisted us without our knowing? Counting our blessings is...More
Congo Crisis Response Meets iPad Tech
For decades, Katanga Province, in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, has suffered humanitarian crises—from famine to war. A group of three territories, called the "triangle of death," has been hit especially hard since 2011, forcing thousands of families to flee. Catholic Relief Services,...More
Miami Teen Serves Malawi Orphans
After watching a documentary about Malawi orphans, Alejandro Ortega, 13, felt compelled to act. The fact that so many Malawian children were now facing hunger, untreated illness and an end to their schooling haunted him.
"It's hard to go on knowing that those things are happening every...More
Outsmarting Coffee Leaf Rust in Guatemala
Inez Ramirez scrambles to the top of the hill overlooking his farm and stops. He takes off his sweat-stained straw hat, wipes his brow with the back of his hand and looks at what's left of his coffee plants.
Living the Gospel, Sharing the Harvest
In the Gospels, the Lord returns to the symbolism of the harvest again and again. The Kingdom of God is like a harvest—wheat will be separated from chaff. To the agrarian communities of the ancient world, few symbols were as powerful as seeding the soil, caring for the crop and harvesting the...More
South Sudan Builds Long Road to Nationhood
One thousand people pull up weeds, clear brush and flatten the soil along a 6-mile stretch of land on the outskirts of Bor, a town in Jonglei State in South Sudan. They say they're building a road, but what they're really building is a nation.
Shoulder to shoulder, residents of nearby...More
Child Labor Belongs in a Classroom
The story of Luis Gonzalez Mulul Mendoza is all too common in rural Guatemala. With a fourth grade education, six children and a plot of land too small to provide for his family, he has no prospects of earning a decent living....More
Refugee Camp Priority: Health and Sanitation
Two years ago, at the peak of the drought in the Horn of Africa, up to 1,500 people a day were coming from Somalia into Kenya, and headed for the refugee camps around the border town of Dadaab. A large entourage of reporters, photographers and film crews chronicled their movements....More
