Summer is a time when many CRS staff working around the world have an opportunity to take home leave to visit with family and friends, take care of some personal business and hopefully get some rest. It is also an opportunity for their hometown newspapers to catch up with them and hear about some of the stories of life overseas as a humanitarian worker.

This past week, three such articles were published that we’d like to share. Greg Auberry, CRS’ country representative in Vietnam, was profiled in the Philadelphia Bulletin. And Nicole Poirier, CRS’ country representative in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, was written up in the Portland [Maine] Press Herald. Finally, an article on Jennifer Poidatz, CRS’ country representative in India, appeared in the Manchester, N.H. Union Leader.

The stories on Greg and Nicole are excerpted below, with links to the respective newspapers. The Union Leader piece on Jennifer is not online, but the author, freelancer Roger Amsden, has granted us permission to reprint it in the blog. Because of its length, we’ll put it in the next blog posting. Thanks Roger!  

Vietnam: Taxiing For Takeoff
 
By Joe Murray, The [Philadelphia] Bulletin

Greg Auberry, CRS/Vietnam. Photo by CRS.

In the seven years since trade relations between the United States and Vietnam were normalized, Vietnam has been struggling to harness its economic power, while creating an infrastructure that seeks to alleviate the burdens, largely poverty, that are placed on the shoulders of its people.

This balance cannot be successful alone, so Catholic Relief Services (CRS), a social justice organization whose “mission is to assist the poor and disadvantaged, leveraging the teachings of the Gospel of Jesus Christ to alleviate human suffering, promote development of all people, and to foster charity and justice throughout the world,” is on the ground in Vietnam, helping her people battle disease, poverty and corruption.

“The best way to describe Vietnam is that it is taxiing for takeoff,” stated Greg Auberry, the head of CRS’s humanitarian programs in Vietnam.

Auberry, who has family in America, lives with his wife in children in Vietnam and is visiting the States for two weeks. The humanitarian’s trip focuses on continued advocacy for increased American assistance in placing this wayward South Asian child on the right track.

As for the biggest obstacle facing a Vietnam on the road to free markets, Auberry suggests it is rural poverty.

“We need to spend some time on rural development and helping poorer farmers obtain the means of selling their product,” stated Auberry. “They need this to make money.”

Read the rest of this article.

Ex-Mainer ‘making a difference’ in Congo

The Auburn native runs three offices for Catholic Relief Services.

By WILLA PLANK Staff Writer

Nicole Poirier-Djonouma rethought her decision to live in the Democratic Republic of the Congo when a two-day battle broke out in March, leaving her 6-year-old son, Imrhane, at the French Embassy after his school was evacuated.

Poirier-Djonouma, 36, who was raised in Auburn, said she reminded herself about the cause she was pushing for and the good she was doing in the country.

“I feel that I’m making a difference in their lives,” Poirier-Djonouma said.

Poirier-Djonouma said she is proud that her two sons have multicultural experience and will be global citizens.

“So many Americans don’t know that Africa is a continent, not a country,” she said.

Read the rest of this article.

CRS President Ken Hackett will receive one of nine honorary degrees bestowed at the 162^ndcommencement at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Ind. on Sunday (May 20).

Notre Dame will recognize distinguished national and international figures in politics, education, medicine, the arts, humanitarian work and the Catholic Church. In addition to Ken, who will receive an honorary Doctor of Humanities degree, the honorees include Jeffrey Immelt, chairman of the board and chief executive officer of General Electric Co., and Dr. Paul Farmer, a world-renown authority on AIDS and tuberculosis.

In a ceremony prior to the commencement, Ken will deliver an address at the diploma ceremony for Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business.

This will be Ken’s fourth honorary doctorate. Last year, he received an honorary degree from his alma mater, Boston College. He has also been recognized by Siena College in Albany, NY, and New York Medical College in Valhalla, NY.

Fr. Bill Headley, counselor to CRS President Ken Hackett and an internationally recognized expert on peace building, has agreed to become the dean of the newly formed Joan B. Kroc School of Peace Studies at the University of San Diego. Here is an article on his appointment from Catholic New Service.

CRS official to take peace studies post at University of San Diego
By Mark Pattison
Catholic News Service

WASHINGTON (CNS) — Spiritan Father William Headley, currently counselor to the president at Catholic Relief Services in Baltimore, has been appointed the founding dean of the Joan B. Kroc School of Peace Studies at the University of San Diego, scheduled to open in the fall.

Father Headley will assume the new post at the Catholic university Aug. 1.

For CRS, he has helped to oversee its relief, development, and justice and peace programs, as well as participate in critical decision-making activities to establish strategic directions for CRS, the U.S. bishops’ international relief and development agency.

In a May 11 telephone interview from Baltimore with Catholic News Service, Father Headley said one thing he would miss about his CRS experience is “hands-on service to the poor in a peace-building capacity.”

He added, “I am not unhappy at CRS. There is a great sadness at leaving here.” One concept he has in mind with his new ministry, though, is “bridging the work at the university and the work we do here.”

Father Headley has an extensive background in peace and justice work. In 1987, he started his order’s first international justice and peace office in Rome, and directed it for five years.

During that time, he used a sabbatical to research grass-roots peacemaking efforts in Northern Ireland, Israel and Palestine, South Africa and Haiti, spending two months in each locale. It is a time he remembers fondly.

At the time of his sabbatical, he told CNS, “they were the hot spots in the world. (Nelson) Mandela had not come out of prison yet (in South Africa). Northern Ireland was still in the throes of its (separatist) intensity. Palestine was moving in and out, depending on what else was happening politically.”

South Africa, he recalled, “was a very special situation.” In pre-Internet days, “oftentimes the group that I was associated with … would serve to gather the basic information (on the continuing anti-apartheid struggle) while the news was still quite fresh.”

In Northern Ireland during the summertime “marching season,” when Catholic-Protestant antagonisms threatened to add more fuel to the sectarian fire, “there would be a group from the house I was staying in that would go out and serve as monitors” during the marches.

The marching season lasts from Easter until the end of August, with Protestant fraternities staging thousands of parades, some through areas predominantly populated by Catholics.

In Palestine, according to Father Headley, “you could get on a certain bus at a certain corner on a certain evening” and be driven to a dwelling to take part in a Jewish-Palestinian dialogue. While the Israeli-Palestinian conflict “certainly has seemed relatively intractable to this moment, it certainly doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be looking at new ways” to resolve it, he added.

“Lots of peace people are working in the background … working diligently,” Father Headley said. “It’s struck me many times as I go around the world: If a conflict is intense, you find groups among them working very diligently to bring about something that is peaceful.”

In July 1993, Father Headley established a graduate program in conflict resolution and peace studies at Spiritan-run Duquesne University in Pittsburgh. In addition to his advanced degrees he has done postdoctoral work in Virginia at George Mason University’s Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution.

While the University of San Diego currently has academic and nonacademic peacemaking programs, they’re “all kind of spread out and separated,” he told CNS. “They need to be creatively bundled in a way that’s appropriate for the school.”

Father Headley also alluded to the “large military community in San Diego,” and the university’s proximity to the U.S.-Mexican border as further opportunities for peacemaking. “If you could take Iraq out of the question, border security would be a major concern,” he said.

CRS President Ken Hackett wrote this op-ed that was published in the May 10 edition of The Baltimore Sun.

By Ken Hackett
May 10, 2007

Winning a stable peace and securing global justice require not only a strong fist but also a helping hand. Unfortunately, the United States could miss an opportunity to extend that open hand of generosity at a time when the world has never needed it more.

Now that President Bush has vetoed the Iraq war spending bill and Congress has begun work on a new draft, public debate rages about deadlines and benchmarks. But there is a critical part of this legislation that almost no one is talking about. The veto didn’t just freeze money for the war; it also shelved assistance meant to save lives and foster peace.

The Iraq war spending bill included vital funding for emergency humanitarian crises, including food for the hungry, assistance for refugees and migrants, disaster and famine relief, and contributions to global peacekeeping operations. Without this funding for human emergencies in places such as Sudan, the Horn of Africa, Iraq, Afghanistan and the West Bank and Gaza, malnutrition, disease and violence will spread and the vulnerable will die.

The United States leads the world in the support of global humanitarian causes and has a long history of assisting the most desperate of humanity. Our country initiated the postwar reconstruction of Europe and Japan through the Marshall Plan, and led the formation of multilateral institutions such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. For the past half-century, U.S. food assistance has provided life and hope to hundreds of millions of people. And in the aftermath of famines, tsunamis, earthquakes or other disasters, the generosity of the American people is unmatched. American leadership can make the critical difference in addressing dire situations around the world. We must respond effectively.

The war spending bill included $460 million for food aid. This support feeds starving people in places such as Sudan and Somalia and also provides a platform for recovery and long-term development partnerships. Such collaboration supports education, agriculture and health. According to a study by the World Bank and the U.S. Geological Survey, $1 spent on disaster preparation through these kinds of developmental programs could avert as much as $7 in future emergency relief.

Also in the bill was $165 million to provide disaster assistance for the world’s most critical emergency needs. The U.S. continued its long tradition of reaching out to refugees and migrants, many of them displaced by unspeakable violence such as the crisis in Darfur, with $185.5 million in refugee aid. And we furthered our goal of global stability by pledging just over $500 million for peacekeeping contributions and operations.

As our nation and our leaders debate the military strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan, I understand that much is at stake. But at the same time, global humanitarian needs cry out for attention.

When we use both our strength and our generosity effectively, we boost our national security. Congress and the president should put aside their differences over war funding to preserve the previously approved assistance for global humanitarian emergencies.

Ken Hackett is president of Baltimore-based Catholic Relief Services, the official international relief and development agency of the U.S. Catholic community. His e-mail is president@crs.org.

CRS Chief of Staff Annemarie Reilly testified before Congress today on food aid. She outlined several proposals that would protect developmental food aid, which helps hungry people secure assets that help them help themselves.