March 22 is World Water Day. With two thirds of the earth under water, you might not think we’d need a day to remind us that millions of people don’t have anywhere near enough of it.
On the 22nd, we’ll publish a World Water Day page with stories, video, and other features about the state of water needs. Until then, each day this week, we’re posting one fact about water that you might not be aware of.
Today’s fact: 900 million people don’t have access to an improved supply of water.
You can learn more about World Water Day here.
Posted
March 18th, 2010 in
world water day by:
John Lindner |
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Msgr. Joe Ciampaglio holds an Operation Rice Bowl bank while talking about Catholic Relief Services at St. Ambrose parish in Cheverly, MD. Photo by Jim Stipe for CRS
St. Ambrose Parish in Cheverly, MD kicked off Operation Rice Bowl this Lenten season by hosting Msgr. Joe Ciampaglio, a CRS Global Fellow. Msgr. Ciampaglio shared how participation in Operation Rice Bowl helps support Catholic Relief Services development projects around the world. St. Ambrose Parish joins Catholic Relief Services and more than 13,000 other faith communities in the United States in a 35-year tradition of praying with our families and faith communities; fasting in solidarity with those who hunger; learning about our global community and the challenges of poverty around the world, and giving sacrificial contributions to those in need.
Posted
March 18th, 2010 in
Lent by:
John Lindner |
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Mimose Dazouloute-Geffrard’s with Anna Pierre, her 97-year-old mother, at the St. Francois de Sales Hospital. Photo by Robyn Fieser/CRS
Mimose Dazouloute-Geffrard dropped bills into special collection trays for Catholic Relief Services during mass at her Clarksville, Maryland church over the years. She wrote a check after cities in her native Haiti were damaged by storms and flooding. She figured the money would be used to help CRS “do good work.”
She never imagined she would one day be the recipient of that work.
Then the ground shook in Haiti for about 35 seconds on January 12. Mimose, a nurse for the state of Maryland, pledged $20 a month for Haiti and checked in on her 97-year-old mother, Anna Pierre, in Haiti. Everything was fine, friends said, “your mother just has a blister between her toes,” Mimose remembers being told. A few days later, the blister was described as a little cut. But in the Haitian tradition of not giving bad news, the friends and neighbors caring for Mimose’s diabetic mother weren’t telling her the whole story.
“Then I got a call on Sunday night, we were about to sit down to dinner,” said Mimose. “A friend of the family, a woman who had been caring for my mother, told me the situation was complicated, that her foot was all black. And if someone in Haiti tells you the situation is complicated, it is complicated. I knew I had to go.”
It took four days to get to Haiti. On February 25 before dawn, Mimose arrived in Petit-Goave, a town two hours and 30 minutes south of the capital by road. She found her mother asleep in a wheelchair in the trash-laden yard of a local school.
She couldn’t unwrap the dirty bandage to see the foot. It was stuck to the skin. But the smell left no doubt.
“I knew we could not save the foot,” said Mimose.
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Posted
March 17th, 2010 in
Haiti by:
John Lindner |
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March 22 is World Water Day. With two thirds of the earth under water, you might not think we’d need a day to remind us that millions of people don’t have anywhere near enough of it.
On the 22nd, we’ll publish a World Water Day page with stories, video, and other features about the state of water needs. Until then, each day this week, we’re posting one fact about water that you might not be aware of.
Today’s fact: Nearly 50% of people in developing countries currently suffer from a water and sanitation-related disease (dysentery, typhoid fever, cholera, intestinal worms, etc).
You can learn more about World Water Day here.
Posted
March 17th, 2010 in
world water day by:
John Lindner |
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Clay Elmhorst, one of eight seminarians from Mundelein Seminary who traveled with CRS Ethiopia as part of the Global Fellows program, shares final thoughts about his journey.
“What am I doing here?” I thought, driving out of the city of Mekelle, Ethiopia. My thoughts were as random as the people we passed on the street. Some were lying on the dirt sidewalk covered in plastic and rags. One woman was holding a baby no more than 6 months old. Most looked as if they hadn’t eaten a hearty meal their entire lives.
The questions I was asking myself—the questions people will ask when I get home—silently haunted me as we drove to Axum. The journey was tiresome as I tried to wrap my mind around everything I was taking in. “Don’t they know how to make gravel around here?” I wondered as we bounced along. All my thoughts about Toyota engineering went out the window as our Land Cruiser stoutly drove over the baseball-sized rocks.
Africa has always been another world to most, and for me, Ethiopia was my crash course. The extreme gaps between the rich and the poor were startling and impossible to ignore. One question kept returning. It just wouldn’t go away: “What can I do?”
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Posted
March 16th, 2010 in
Africa by:
John Lindner |
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A single mother and her daughter receive a cow at a livestock fair in rural Bangladesh. Photo by Laura Sheahen/CRS
I don’t know a lot about cows, or any livestock for that matter. Working for Catholic Relief Services and visiting the rural people we serve has been an ongoing education for me.
A few weeks ago in Bangladesh, cyclone survivors who have been working to rebuild their lives lined up, vouchers in hand, for a cow fair. The small female cows (would that be heifers?) patiently chewed straw while the beneficiaries talked excitedly about their plans.
“Today I am looking for a red cow. During Cyclone Sidr, my red cow died,” said Parul Begum, a 58-year-old grandmother in a black burqa. “The wind and waves took everything. My house was completely gone. I’ve never seen such a thing in my life.”
During the storm, Parul struggled through chin-high water to get to a police station that was on high ground. “I thought I was going to die.”
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Posted
March 16th, 2010 in
Asia by:
John Lindner |
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March 22 is World Water Day. With two thirds of the earth under water, you might not think we’d need a day to remind us that millions of people don’t have anywhere near enough of it.
On the 22nd, we’ll publish a World Water Day page with stories, video, and other features about the state of water needs. Until then, each day this week, we’re posting one fact about water that you might not be aware of.
Today’s fact: In the U.S., nearly 100% of people have multiple taps and flush toilets inside their homes. In Sub-Saharan Africa, less than 30% have running water and sanitation available.
You can learn more about World Water Day here.
Posted
March 16th, 2010 in
world water day by:
John Lindner |
No Comments »
March 22 is World Water Day. With two thirds of the earth under water, you might not think we’d need a day to remind us that millions of people don’t have anywhere near enough of it.
On the 22nd, we’ll publish a World Water Day page with stories, video, and other features about the state of water needs. Until then, each day this week, we’re posting one fact about water that you might not be aware of.
Today’s fact: Water has both a physical and spiritual dimension. It is essential for life and all major religions have a spiritual link between faith and water.
You can learn more about World Water Day here.
Posted
March 15th, 2010 in
world water day by:
John Lindner |
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The graduates clap and ululate as each participant receives her certificate. Photo by Melita Sawyer/CRS
Melita Sawyer, Microfinance Technical Advisor at CRS headquarters in Baltimore, recently attended a graduation ceremony in Sudan.
Graduations are a big deal in Sudan. Not that they go unnoticed in the United States, but here in Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, graduations mean singing, dancing, showering graduates with congratulations (and sometimes fake snow too) and lots of food—all during the ceremony.
I was really looking forward to attending the graduation ceremony for 150 women who received vocational training through CRS’ Khartoum State Poverty Reduction program, and it far exceeded my expectations. The minute we arrived and heard the all-women’s marching band playing a lively tune, surrounded by graduates happily dancing, I knew that this graduation would be different.
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Posted
March 15th, 2010 in
Africa by:
John Lindner |
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Father Manny Clavijo is a priest at St. Mary’s in the Diocese of Worester, Massachusetts. He recently joined two other priests and eight Mundelein seminarians on a trip to Ethiopia to visit CRS development projects as part of the Global Fellows program. Here he shares his thoughts as the trip came to an end.
Our visit to Ethiopia is coming to a conclusion. We have visited the Missionaries of Charity one last time at their Sidist Kilo home for the destitute and dying in Addis, and now we are packing to return to the USA later tonight.
These few days in Ethiopia have left an indelible mark on all of us. This mark will travel with us back to the States and be our motivation for sharing our story with our families and communities.
We have seen what poverty, global warming, injustice and underdevelopment can do to a human being, to a child of God. All these adverse factors can truly make a child of God believe that he or she is not. But despite the different faces and situations with which suffering makes known its overpowering presence in Ethiopia, there are still signs of hope.
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Posted
March 15th, 2010 in
Africa by:
John Lindner |
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