Catholic Relief Services is distributing aid items to flood victims. The aid packages include kitchenware like pots and plates; sleeping mats and blankets; soap, detergent, and water purification tablets. Photo by Laura Sheahen/CRS

Sixteen-year-old Renuka works twelve hours a day in a garbage dump in southern India, sorting cans, bottles, and glass. Each day she earns about 80 cents, enough to bring a few pounds of rice home to her family’s house in a slum area of the city of Adoni. Her parents don’t work, so she and her sister support the family by working at the dump. She sifts through a lot of trash, but says the needles don’t poke her.

Renuka could take Sunday off if she didn’t need the money, but she does—so she works every day. She took the day off on Tuesday this week, however, to travel two and a half hours to receive a package of aid items from CRS. Most of the beneficiaries live closer to the CRS distribution site, but Renuka and others from Adoni were added to the beneficiary list: not only is she HIV-positive, but her family’s home was destroyed in a devastating flood that hit India a few weeks ago.

It’s a triple whammy of crushing misfortune: impoverished, sick, and now virtually homeless, this teenager’s life seems impossibly grim. Renuka has someone on her side, though: a short, determined woman named Sister Lilly Lobo.
(more…)

Twenty-year-old Kasturi and her two daughters sit in a hut made of sticks and old saris in a tent camp near Rampurum, India. She and her husband and daughters fled severe flooding that struck the area in early October. Photo by Laura Sheahen/CRS

“The water rose from my feet to my waist in five minutes,” she says.

She is nine months pregnant, and does not know where she will go for the delivery. “I will probably have the baby here,” she says. Her daughters’ stomachs are distended; it is believed they may have worms.

Kasturi and her family, like many survivors, fled to higher ground and evacuation centers like railway platforms with only the clothes they were wearing.

Many of the people affected were lower-caste daily wage laborers who work in rice or cotton fields. The crops were destroyed by the flood, and there is no work for them now. Sacks of rice that some people had saved were also destroyed but mud and water, so the survivors have no food of their own.
(more…)

CRS staff and volunteers load boxes for delivery to Gaza as part of a relief effort that will serve 1500 families. Photo by Michelle Barsa/CRS

This week in the West Bank, college-age volunteers helped pack hundreds of boxes with blankets, diapers, plastic basins, and other items to be delivered to 1500 families in the war-torn Gaza Strip. CRS is also sending ready-to-eat food like canned tuna because many families have no way to cook food.

Elias Kreitem, Operations Manager in CRS’ Jerusalem office, said that CRS’ efforts have received a great deal of local support. “The supplier has contributed a lot and was willing to help in all circumstances, like giving us extra warehouse space at no additional charge. I visited the storerooms [on Jan. 20] and all volunteers (most of them with university degrees) were packing the purchased items. Many of them were scouts and worked every day almost until midnight in order to send the packages to Gaza in a timely manner. I was happy to see things moving forward with this help and enthusiasm from all suppliers and scout members.”

With fighting continuing in the Gaza Strip, our prayers are with our colleagues in Gaza and Israel.

A morning press release updates information about our response:

“As the conflict in Gaza and Southern Israel continues, Catholic Relief Services will provide 500 war-affected families in Gaza with desperately needed food and other humanitarian relief supplies. With a $250,000 grant from the U.S. Agency for International Development and $100,000 from its American donors, CRS will distribute food, hygiene items, blankets, candles, and other essentials.”

Here is the complete press release.

Images of submerged streets and mangled roofs have faded from the headlines. But the greatest storm to touch down in Cuba in decades is still very much a reality for Cubans, CRS, and its partners providing outreach from Miami.

Hurricanes Gustav and Ike tore through areas of Cuba in August and September, causing record damage and forced 3 million residents from their homes. This was no ordinary storm season. Cubans face a long and arduous road to recovery.

Outside of the Daughters of Charity in Miami volunteers stand by a shipment of relief supplies that will be sent to Cuba to help victims of Hurricanes Gustav and Ike. Photo by Kai T. Hill/CRS.

This is why the front lawn of the Daughters of Charity in West Miami remains filled with relief supplies. With the help of CRS, the Daughters of Charity this week will have sent 21 large shipping containers of food, medicine and hygiene supplies among other items. So far over $1 million in relief has been sent to the country, says CRS’ Lynn Renner, who recently visited the sisters and the Miami Archdiocese.

Under a canopy of palm trees, petite but stalwart nuns and dozens of volunteers work side by side to sort and pack goods bound for the island.

“They were going about their business very intently,” says Renner. “They have the help they needed and are saying we want to do this to help. They were serious about making sure that everything was categorized properly and of good quality.”

In total, CRS and Daughters of Charity plan to send more than 700,000 pounds of food and medicines and other relief supplies to the island.

CRS is also sending 5,000 roofing panels to Cuba. They were provided by the Friends of Caritas Cuba.

You can also help by making a donation to CRS’ Latin America and Caribbean Severe Weather Fund.

Kai T. Hill, CRS associate web producer

Caritas posted a story about two babies born during Cyclone Sidr. Saturday, Nov. 15, is the one-year anniversary of the storm.