It’s New Year’s resolution time again. Or is it?
Real change usually takes a crisis of some sort. Maybe a doctor visit turns up something that inspires you to eat healthier. Or a near miss on the freeway convinces you to slow down. Without such motivation, resolutions tend to fizzle into wishes.
This year, we all face a common crisis: global financial troubles.
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Sahar Frangieh, Project Officer for CRS Lebanon, writes from Beirut about how our work helps young people in troubled Lebanese villages:

The global economic crisis is affecting everyone around the world; families are suffering from unemployment and social instability. Inequity among people is increasing. The high price of food and fuel is threatening families’ sustainability, especially in rural areas. However, change can happen.

Rima Sleiman is a young woman whose life was touched by CRS. This law graduate, born and still living with her family in Qsaibe, a rural village in South Lebanon, had been searching for a job opportunity close to her home. She wanted an opportunity to improve her life, contribute financially to her family’s rising costs of living, and at the same time fulfill her dreams.
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Todd Holmes, Regional Security and Safety Officer for CRS in the Middle East, has lived in Cairo for several years. Here, he writes about how the global economic crisis is affecting an Egyptian friend who has already been struggling.

CRS security officer Todd Holmes stands near the Avenue of the Sphinx in Luxor, Egypt. Photo by CRS staff

I met Hamed, a 30 year old single man, when I first moved to Egypt. He was hotel staff where CRS put me up until I found more permanent housing. Hamed was warm, welcoming, and gracious. Since the hotel was near the CRS office, I would run into him from time to time. We hung out several times and I learned more of his personal story. His father had died when he was a teenager leaving his mother to struggle to raise him.

He grew up into a hard working man and when it came his turn, entered military service that he completed in three years. Fresh out of the military he needed to support his widowed mother and found work as a pool hand in the hotel’s recreation area.
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Safoura Allaza, who lives in Agoényivé, outside Lomé, the capital of Togo, has been hit hard by the global financial crisis. She told her story to Qeenida Eklou, who works for CRS Togo.

I was a second-hand clothes seller at the main market in Lomé. I sold a little of everything. For three months, my sales were falling. I wasn’t even able to cover the taxi ride to the market. So I decided to change jobs: I started offering my services as a maid who did everything: laundry, sweeping, general housekeeping.
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Catholic News Service reports that Pope Benedict XVI urged world leaders to tackle poverty with courage, even in the face of the current global financial crisis.

“On the occasion of this important meeting … I want to renew my invitation to adopt and implement with courage the measures needed to eradicate extreme poverty, hunger, ignorance and the scourge of pandemics, which strike above all the most vulnerable,” he said.

The news service reports that the pope said he recognized that honoring commitments to development aid will require “sacrifice at this difficult economic moment in the world.”