A young boy in India receives receives polio vaccine drops. Photo by Laura Sheahen for CRS

U.S. poverty-focused international assistance is making it possible for this child in a poor, remote village in India to receive a polio vaccine. While polio is rare, it is a frightening reality in India and other developing countries. Moreover, a polio outbreak in India or elsewhere in the world could have serious consequences for unvaccinated people in far-off places, spreading rapidly and causing paralysis in children for life and sometimes even killing them.

Congress is now preparing to make important decisions about how much funding to make available for programs such as this polio vaccine initiative and many others that are saving and changing lives around the world. While our nation’s fiscal challenges are significant, poverty-focused international assistance makes up less than 0.5% of the U.S. federal budget. This little bit of funding saves millions of lives around the world by providing food to the hungry, shelter to refugees, helping small farmers grow more crops, and educating children for a more prosperous and stable future. Cutting this assistance will not balance the federal budget, but careless cuts will cost lives. For further background, read these recent letters to the House and Senate Subcommittees by Bishop Richard Pates, Chair of the Committee on International Justice and Peace of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, and Dr. Carolyn Woo, President of Catholic Relief Services.

Your voice makes a difference. Your support for this lifesaving funding last year helped stave off steep cuts. Your voice is now needed again. Contact your members of Congress today and urge them to support poverty-focused international assistance in the fiscal year 2013 appropriations bills at the highest levels possible.

Keddo Umar is one of more than 302,000 people to take part in the CRS Productive Safety Net Program in Ethiopia. Photo by David Snyder for CRS

Imagine you lived in Ethiopia, where millions of people like Keddo do not know where their next meal will come from. Before they could rely on their farms to provide much needed food to eat and to sell, but increasingly unreliable rains have changed this. Now many families must sell precious household items like their chickens or goats just to get through the hungry season. They are increasingly trapped in a cycle of poverty and hunger.

But imagine that something simple could be done to help people like Keddo.

With just six annual distributions of wheat, dried peas and vegetable oil, Keddo has been able to feed her family during lean times and use the money she saved from her small business to buy an ox and a cow. Although she owns only sixth-tenths of an acre, formerly the sole source of her family’s food, she can now use that land exclusively for more marketable high-value crops such as tomatoes and potatoes. With more assets, Keddo had the collateral required to successfully apply for a loan to buy three goats that she plans to breed and expand her business. Perhaps most importantly, Keddo says the money she saved has allowed her to put all of her six children in school, something she was unable to afford before.

This is just one example of what some of the programs funded by the United States Farm Bill can do. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, along with Catholic Relief Services, Catholic Charities USA and the National Catholic Rural Life Conference, are united in their support for passage of a Farm Bill that feeds and changes the lives of poor and vulnerable people here at home and around the world, promotes conservation that protects God’s creation, lifts up small family farms and helps rural America thrive.

Your action is needed now! Make sure the Farm Bill feeds the hungry, preserves God’s creation, and supports small family farmers and rural America. Visit this website to send an e-mail to your Representative or call 1-702-577-2339 to reach your Representative now. Click here for call instructions and talking points.

Double your impact! Copy and paste your message to your Representatives and submit it on the House Agriculture Committee feedback form.

El Salvador isn’t an easy country to prepare for, whether it’s immunizations, state department registry, or packing for a variety of “what-if” situations that could arise on a nine-day tour of a country where the memory of a horrific civil war is still hovering over the people of this Massachusetts-sized nation. Despite the detailed guidelines we received from Catholic Relief Services, one thing they failed to prepare us for is how fast we would fall in love with the Salvadoran people.

Driving through the crowded city streets of San Salvador, the remnants of political tensions and barb-wired rooftops tell their own story. However I was struck by a wall painted with the words “PAZ Y AMOR,” translated “Peace and Love.” The sentiment was amplified by the young people participating in various youth-development programs.

Speaking to several classrooms of children in a school funded by CRS and USAID, I expected them to express interest in having their share of the “American Dream”. However, each of them, on several separate and isolated occasions, expressed how they just want to learn job skills to help their families. One young man in particular, Raul, shared with us how he has worked at a bread factory for the last year and saved enough money for his family to replace their home’s corrugated tin walls with bricks and mortar. Not parties, not fancy clothes, not a new car: Raul wanted to literally build on his family’s foundation for a more secure future.

In the dozens of people we have encountered over the last few days, hearing stories of hope for the future, and heroic legacies of the past, there is one constant message: a desire for a strengthened presence of peace and an outpouring of endless love. The Salvadoran sense of love is expressed in greetings, meals and gratitude for all the blessings God has given them.

One parish church—Mary, Mother of the Poor—was filled with people who have survived the utmost evil in their land, but still praise God and thank Him for blessing them despite the loss of loved ones, poverty, and everyday strife.

Our brothers and sisters in El Salvador have changed my life forever. My prayer for them today is continued Peace and Love. One small flame still shines brightly even in the darkest hour. Salvadorans are a chorus of Christ’s radiating light.

A vendor signs information at a CRS seed fair in Seko, Central African Republic. CRS piloted a barcode tracking system in CAR in June 2011 as a more efficient and effective way to register and track beneficiaries and vendors. Photo by Sandra Basgall/CRS

Sandra Basgall turned seventy a few weeks ago. But there’s no easy chair in sight for this Colorado-born CRS staffer. Sandra’s an advisor on monitoring and evaluation for the Central Africa Region, lives in Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and is still very much in on the action. She’s lived in 15 different US states and 6 different countries, but home is wherever she lays her hat. “I don’t look back and think ‘oh I wish I was there again’. I just look forward and think ‘where am I going to go next and what am I going to do next?’”

Technology has never held any fear for Sandra. She touched her first computer in 1982. “The woman who was teaching us was maybe a week ahead of our lessons”. Since then she’s moved with the times … she started typing her Masters thesis on an electric typewriter before graduating to a huge word processing system that took up most of the office. By the time she was writing her Ph.D, she was on a laptop computer—albeit a 22-pound one, which looked like a portable sewing machine…

“Something exciting’s happening at CRS,” Sandra confided to me. “Firstly, data collection is becoming the backbone of our projects, and secondly, the technology with which we can collect data in real time is really advancing. We’ve never been able to do such things in development work before. We used to look at data that’s 6 months or a year old and say ‘Oh, if only I’d known this…’ – well, now we can know and we can plan our projects around that.”

Sandra believes firmly that CRS is a leader in the ICT4D world (Information and Communications Technology for Development). It’s the only organization to hold an annual global ICT4D conference—the fourth was held this year in Kigali, Rwanda. Sandra remembers the first one in Nairobi three years ago.

“The techies sat at one table and the ‘development’ people sat at another. But then, slowly, they started talking to each other,” she explains. “Right now, I feel as comfortable with the techies as they do with me. We now understand each other’s roles and how to integrate them. In the past, we’d only call a techie if we had a problem with our computer or the internet or if the mainframe was down. Now they’re an integral part of everything we’re doing.”

And it’s not just up to the ‘techies’ to discover technological breakthroughs. Sandra had her own ”eureka moment” a little while back, which could now help transform the way CRS keeps track of the people that it’s helping.

She wanted a better way of tracking which beneficiaries were getting which service—whether it’s food, seeds, tools, whatever. And then a serendipitous event changed everything.

“I had a magazine in my hand and I threw it on my desk and starting doing something else. Then I turned and looked and saw the barcode on the back of it and suddenly thought ‘Aha! That’s how we can do it!’” Sandra then explained her idea to the IT folk and they started turning it into a reality.

Sandra Basgall hugs her colleagues outside Nyamagabe Health Center, Southern Province, Rwanda. Photo by Kevin Kostic/CRS

“The methodology we used was really quite different than how I’d imagined, but that just shows the importance of bonding between IT people and ‘field’ people, like me. They know so much more about these things”.

Last summer, Sandra saw her barcode technology put into practice as a pilot during CRS seed fairs in Central African Republic.. Each beneficiary and vendor was given an identification card with a barcode on it, which was scanned to register the person and keep track of what they received or sold. Their photo was taken with a smart phone and information about them was then stored on a kind of ‘virtual form’ accessible on or offline. A world away from all the paper forms, signatures and thumb prints of previous fairs.

“We found it saved time, it saved money, everybody enjoyed it,” Sandra told me happily. “I thought people might be a bit afraid of the technology, a bit reluctant … but they embraced it and were excited about it. Central African Republic is one of the poorest countries in the world, with a very low literacy rate. So it just shows that technology is something that anyone can accept and use. Plus, it made things a lot simpler. It could really revolutionize the way we do things.”

Because of the success of the pilot, the technology could now be used in a whole range of areas of development work undertaken by CRS.

So where does Sandra’s desire to give come from? Her inspiration is her Mom. “I remember my Mother telling me when I was young, that we have a responsibility to give back to our community more than we take from it. So when I look at my community in the larger sense, being the world, that means I have a responsibility towards that world to make it a different, a better place, so that people can have access to the things that we in the West think are normal.”

Sandra hopes she’s passed down these values to her two children, and their children.

And with cutting edge technology in the mix, that ”giving back” just got a whole lot more exciting. For Sandra, it’s like seeing long-held hopes come true.

“My parents introduced me to science fiction when I was pretty young. The things I was reading about as a child, like barcode readers, GPS, intelligent phones, we’re using them today. Who would have ever thought? I always believed that science fiction was a picture of what people are thinking about for the future … and, well, here’s the proof that it can happen.”

Catholic Relief Services student ambassadors on campus began planning the first annual Food Fast Retreat six months ago and on Sunday, April 29, their dreams were put into action. The ambassadors began planning this event because they wanted to bring awareness to the many people in the United States and globally who suffer from food insecurity.

“The purpose of the Food Fast Retreat was to live in solidarity with the many around the world that go hungry each day,” Kelsey Kastrava, vice president of CRS Ambassadors, said.

The 14 students and three faculty who participated spent 10 hours fasting, interacting in case-study scenarios and then reflecting, in order to put themselves in the shoes of the many who go hungry daily.

Read more about their experience.

Salvacion Pacatang at her desk in the CRS/DSAC Cayagan de Oro, Philippines Office. She lost her home to flash floods triggered by Typhoon Sendong in December 2011. Photo by Autumn Brown/CRS

By Autumn Brown

Seeing Salvacion Pacatang walk around the office as the area coordinator working with Catholic Relief Services’ partner, the Diocese Social Action Center, you would never guess that her life had been turned upside down only a few months before. She is a survivor of Typhoon Sendong, the cyclone that ravaged her community in Cagayan de Oro, Philippines on the night of December 16, 2011—killing many of her friends and neighbors and sweeping her home out to sea.

The morning of the flashflood, Salvacion traveled with her family to visit a sister—leaving her 10-year-old daughter, Delseah, behind in the care of her 20-year-old nephew, John Mark.

It started to rain very heavily that night and Salvacion began to worry about her daughter. Over the phone Delseah told her that the first floor of her home was already flooded. Salvacion began to panic. She knew her daughter could not swim. Their neighbors who lived in one-story homes had come over and were staying with Delseah on the second floor for safety.

It made Salvacion feel a bit better to know her daughter wasn’t alone, but she still left her sister’s house at 3:00 am to get home as soon as possible, check on her daughter and inspect the damage to her home. But, when she arrived that morning, her neighborhood was completely gone. All 33 homes on her street were gone, replaced by nothing but a dirty stream full of debris.

Salvacion rushed to a nearby basketball court where survivors were congregating. She searched frantically for her daughter, fearing the worst. She knew that the home that they had used all their savings to build with their own hands was gone, but that didn’t matter to her now. She prayed and prayed, saying “I don’t care if my house is washed away, please Lord, just save my daughter.”

Salvacion starts to cry as she retells this part of the story and remembers that morning. The basketball court was in chaos as survivors ran from person to person, asking for news of family and loved ones. Salvacion spent the entire morning doing the same. She found her nephew, John Mark, but he was separated from Delseah during the night as the water destroyed their home and didn’t know if Delseah had survived. Salvacion had never felt such despair.

It was around 10:00 a.m. when a neighbor approached Salvacion saying “I saw your daughter over there!” Salvacion remembers the moment when she saw her daughter and couldn’t contain her sobs. Delseah had managed to cling to a log all night and had survived. She was rescued when the log floated to calmer waters. Of the 11 neighbors who took refuge in her home that night, only 5 survived.

Immediately following Typhoon Sendong, Salvacion and her family stayed in tents set up on a basketball court. After 3 months living in a hot tent, Salvacion moved to transitional housing built by CRS. These sturdy shelters help people escape the miserable conditions of overcrowded tents and evacuation centers until they are able to transfer to permanent housing.

CRS built these shelters after flash floods rushed through neighborhoods in Cagayan de Oro in December 2011. Photo by Charisse Borja/CRS

Salvacion expressed gratitude for her new wooden home, saying “The house is very comfortable and much cooler than the tents. I am very happy to have it.” Every day, Salvacion feels fortunate that her family survived the flood. She only has to look around at her neighbors to see what could have been.

While living in the tent, Salvacion volunteered to help CRS identify beneficiaries and their needs. Her willingness to help other victims led to a job with CRS’ partner. Now, working as area coordinator and helping families relocate to transitional housing, Salvacion says, “It is so fulfilling to be helping. As a Sendong victim myself, being able to help the other victims is a great opportunity.”

Salvacion has been through many difficulties in the last few months, but in the office she has a reason to smile. Her experiences help her to understand people’s needs and empathize with them, motivating her to continue helping neighbors, friends and thousands of others start the process of recovery from this terrible disaster.

Autumn Brown is a CRS fellow based in Madagascar. She is currently assisting CRS in the Philippines.

I do not envy our elected officials these days. They are faced with many difficult choices, with many pressures coming from different directions, with many asking for resources and many others trying to limit those resources.

In making difficult choices to reduce future unsustainable deficits, our leaders must keep in mind the plight of the poor, here and around the world. Those among us who have the least power and the greatest need should be at the forefront of their minds.

For me, this is a moral choice. My church asks that we — individually, as communities and as a nation — give special consideration to the poor, that we recognize our obligation to help those who are not just at the bottom of the ladder, but those who are below that, trying desperately to reach the bottom rung, constantly pushed down by forces beyond their control.

But helping the poor is not just a matter of good morality, it also makes good sense.

Read the full article here.

This is just another example of how your voice matters and makes a difference. Pope Benedict XVI said in his Easter message: “May the risen Jesus comfort the suffering populations of the Horn of Africa and favor their reconciliation; may he help […] Sudan and South Sudan, and grant their inhabitants the power of forgiveness.” Your prayers for peace are needed now. Use this prayer resource for individual reflection or group setting.

Your voice for peace in solidarity with our Sudanese brothers and sisters is needed now more than ever. The promise of lasting peace and stability after South Sudan peacefully seceded from Sudan last year hangs in the balance. Read more about the situation in Sudan and South Sudan.

Stand with the Sudanese people and for peace. Sign this letter to Secretary Hillary Clinton, urging her to do what she can to promote peace, stability and a hopeful future for our Sudanese brothers and sisters.

Cécile Mujawayezu is a nurse at Bungwe Health Centre, one of the partner sites of the AIDSRelief program. She’s been counseling 12-year-old Jean-Claude about his HIV status. Photo by Helen Blakesley/CRS

Cécile is talking to Séraphine about her medicine. Séraphine is HIV positive. She lost her husband to the virus and is now bringing up their six kids in Bungwe, a village high in the hills of northern Rwanda.

A senior nurse at Bungwe Health Center, Cécile used to have to wait for a doctor to come to start people on antiretroviral therapy and conduct more complex medical evaluations—and those visits are only once a week. But now she can handle it by herself. She’s had the training courtesy of the Ministry of Health.

It’s just one of the changes since the center became an AIDSRelief site in 2005. Catholic Relief Services leads the consortium that runs the AIDSRelief program, which is funded by the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief.

“A lot has changed, I’ve learned a lot with the AIDSRelief program,” says Cécile. “It’s helped so much with patient care, with medication, counseling. They’ve trained us, mentored us—really helped us to work as a team. Treating HIV and AIDS is a multidisciplinary affair. None of us can work alone.”

12-year-old Jean-Claude Ntahontuye and his Mom, Seraphine Mukadipanda, attend an HIV consultation at Bungwe Health Centre, Burera district, in Northern Rwanda. Photo by Helen Blakesley/CRS

What’s really stuck in Cécile’s mind from this morning’s consultation, though, is Séraphine’s boy, 12-year-old Jean-Claude. Cécile had to break some life-changing news to the child today. Like his mom, he is HIV positive. But Jean-Claude didn’t cry when he heard the news. He kept a bright smile on his face. He’s accustomed to coming to the health center with his mom to make sure she’s okay.

‘It No Longer Means Death’

Cécile has been counseling kids like Jean-Claude who may have been exposed to HIV during their mother’s pregnancy, delivery or breastfeeding. “Before, when you spoke to someone about HIV, it meant death,” Cécile says.“But, now, it no longer means death. We’ve been helped to treat patients as a human being like any other, not like someone who’s going to die.” Jean-Claude told her this morning that he wants to become a doctor.

Throughout Rwanda, AIDSRelief has drawn on three pillars to strengthen existing local health systems. It has looked at the financial side of things—how funding grants are managed. It has shown how the use of data can be vital in tailoring and improving treatment and the overall program. And AIDSRelief has invested in establishing and maintaining high-quality HIV care and treatment services. All of this is against a backdrop of involving the community in care and treatment, such as regular home visits, which help ensure good follow-up.

Nearly 12,000 people receive HIV care and treatment, and almost 7,000 of those undergo antiretroviral therapy The program has achieved outstanding clinical results in remote areas of the country: Only 2 percent of people fail to return for follow-up appointments, and 91 percent of people surveyed who are receiving antiretroviral therapy have a such a low level of the virus in their bloodstream that it’s undetectable.

Long-Lasting Solution

Over the past few years, though, PEPFAR’s focus has shifted from an external emergency response to an increasing emphasis on strengthening health systems and building a sustainable response owned by each host country.

So, for the past 2 years , AIDSRelief has been accompanying Rwanda’s Ministry of Health, with its district hospitals and health centers, so that it could eventually take the driver’s seat. That transition is now complete. It’s the first time a host government has fully taken over a PEPFAR-funded HIV treatment program.

Alphonse Kayiranga is a nurse educator with the University of Maryland School of Medicine’s Institute of Human Virology, a member of the AIDSRelief consortium. “We’ve tried to do our best to prepare the different health centers and hospitals for transition,” says Alphonse. “We’ve tried to strengthen capacity and share our knowledge. I feel they’re well prepared. There’s also been work with central government to strengthen the national system. I’m confident that it’ll go well.”

For Leia Isanhart Balima, chief of party for CRS-Rwanda AIDSRelief, and her team, the transition has had an interesting twist. “It’s not every day in development that you get to work yourself out of a job,” she says. “It’s been really special to work with the team and watch the way they’ve grown and to watch the sites take ownership of the program and the government really taking on responsibility.”

She adds, “It’s neat to be able to let go and say we’ve put the basic building blocks in place for them, and now they can go on from here”.

Helen Blakesley is CRS’ regional information officer for West and Central Africa. She is based in Dakar, Senegal.

A CRS team distributes emergency food in Mopti, Mali to people who have fled their homes due to separatist violence in the North of the country. Photo by CRS Staff

Unrest and uncertainty are continuing in the West African state of Mali, as rebel separatist forces have taken control of the northern desert region. Interim civilian power has been restored in the capital, Bamako, after last month’s military coup, but Mali’s political future is still unclear. Violence in the north continues and many thousands of people are still fleeing their homes – either to move further south or to cross the borders into neighboring countries. CRS remains committed to serve the people of Mali and to continue its relief and development work there.

Timothy Bishop, CRS country representative in Mali has stayed at his post in Bamako throughout the crisis. He talked to us about the reopening of one of CRS’ offices and how CRS is leading the way in providing help for those displaced by the violence.

Two weeks ago CRS’ office in Mopti was temporarily closed. Why has it now re-opened?

We closed the Mopti office due to a strong threat of rebel attack on the town. We temporarily closed the office—relocating staff, equipment, and food to safe locations—one day after rebels took control of Mali’s northern regions. At the time, it was clear they could move further south, into Mopti region, at any moment. Since then, the Mali army has reinforced its positions in Mopti, and we feel more confident basing staff and resources there. Closing the office severely hampered our ability to deliver emergency assistance to people who’d fled their homes, what we call internally displaced people (IDPs), and other needy populations. Reopening the office is a relief to us all, even though the risk of attack is not entirely gone.

How would you describe the general situation in Mali now? How are people feeling?

People in Mali are both frightened and anxious. Those in the north fear the rebels could continue south. In the event they do not, the Malian army will at some point try to recapture the northern regions, raising the possibility of a large-scale war. People in Bamako, meanwhile, fear political volatility, as the military junta transitions back to a civilian government.

How is it affecting the work of CRS? How are the staff?

Following the coup d’état (which destabilized Bamako) and the rebel advance (which destabilized the north), all CRS programs were halted for about ten days. CRS’ programs are now back up and running nationwide, except in the three northern regions. CRS staff remain highly motivated, as we all realize that in times of crisis, CRS and our partners are more important than ever.

Can you explain the IDP problem?

The rebels, composed of at least seven distinct groups, attacked military camps in Mali’s three northern towns: first Kidal, then Tomboctou and Gao nearly simultaneously. After chasing out the Malian army, the rebels systematically looted government facilities in each town, before looting NGOs offices. During the violence, tens of thousands of Malians fled the urban centers. More continue to flee each day. There are large numbers of IDPs (who become refugees when they cross international borders) in Niger, Burkina Faso, Mauritania, and central/southern Mali. Total estimates exceed 200,000 people.

What is CRS doing to help IDPs?

Last week, CRS was appointed lead agency for IDP food assistance in Mopti, the largest transit site for IDPs moving from the northern regions further south. CRS is leading an inter-agency IDP assessment team in Mopti and has started food distributions. We are also looking to see what non-food items IDPs need, for instance cooking utensils, tents, blankets, sleeping mats, and mosquito nets.

Have you come across any family’s story that stuck out for you?

Not so far amongst the IDPs, but yes, amongst some CRS staff I have. We have three staff whose families hail from the north. They have reported in some parts of the country receiving looks of hostility from normally warm, welcoming southerners. Clearly the rebels are both creating and exploiting a racial divide between the north and the south.

What are your hopes for the immediate future for Mali?

If Mali can return to a civilian government, its international assistance will be restored (many donors suspended help after the coup d’état). The assistance is critical both for long-term development programs and for strengthening the Malian military, so it can fight back against the rebels in the north. We all hope for political progress now. It’s also imperative that all donor countries push for humanitarian access in the three northern regions, so aid can circulate freely there. Not only can we not get any significant resources into those areas, we’re unable to evaluate the extent of the humanitarian crisis there.