Catholic Relief Services

By Carolyn Woo

As anyone who has tried to hold a cookout in the summer knows, mosquitoes are inventive and resilient pests, requiring significant resourcefulness if you are going to keep them from spoiling the fun.

In many parts of the world, keeping mosquitoes at bay is...

By Bishop Gerald Kicanas
Chair, Catholic Relief Services' Board of Directors

Later this month, I will have the privilege of traveling with several other brother bishops from the United States to join our Holy Father on his visit to Cuba. Pope Benedict XVI follows in the...

Kony 2012 -- the video made by the charity Invisible Children to highlight the violent actions of the Lord's Resistance Army and its leader Joseph Kony -- has been viewed over 100 million times worldwide in the past 10 days.

While the media storm rages, Catholic Relief Services is...

by Bill O'Keefe.

With so much partisan discord these days on Capitol Hill, it's hard to imagine any issue on which both parties can agree. Although Republicans and Democrats have drawn lines in the sand on matters ranging from the budget ceiling to job creation, there is one vital area...

For the latest on Catholic Relief Services' work around the world, visit the CRS Newswire.

By Michael Hill

By all rights, the Missionaries of Charity Home for the Destitute and Dying in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia should be a depressing place. After all, the 1,000 people in here are...

Lane Bunkers is Catholic Relief Services' (CRS) Country Representative for Ethiopia, one of three East African countries plagued by drought that has affected more than 11 million people. Here he talks about the current food emergency in Ethiopia and how CRS' long-term development and drought mitigation programs have helped ease...

By Bekele Abaire and Sara A. Fajardo

Ethiopians remember keenly the devastating losses of the drought in 1984 and the more recent one in 2000. The numerous pastoralist communities in Ethiopia know that lack of access to water will kill their livestock and destroy the very fabric of their culture.

By Michael Hill

Hunger and the threat of malnutrition are becoming the daily reality for millions of people in East Africa. A lack of rainfall and rising food prices are increasingly straining their food supply, Catholic Relief Services (CRS) staff members in the region are reporting.

"Rains last fall failed...

By Kim Pozniak

JUBA, Republic of South Sudan -- The streets of Juba are bustling as people from around the world arrive to celebrate the birth of a new nation: The Republic of South Sudan. Sidewalks are swept clean, smiling children practice songs and dances, workers at the airport patch...

By Ken Hackett

JUBA, South Sudan-- Less than a week after the United States celebrated its Independence Day for the 235th time, another nation was born, beginning its journey into history. That would be the Republic of South Sudan, which raised its flag for the first time as a sovereign...

By Robyn Fieser

At 6 feet 3 inches tall and 200 pounds, Felix Antonio Sterling looks like a bear, but acts like a kid. He cruises the streets of his neighborhood in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, honking his horn, waving nonchalantly to friends, as he shows off the booming speaker...

by Caroline Brennan

For many Afghan women, these classes offer a rarity in the culture: a space outside the home for women to meet. Photo by Jim Stipe for Catholic Relief Services

By Ken Hackett
President, Catholic Relief Services

It is no surprise that in the current budget cutting climate sweeping over Washington that many have taken aim at foreign aid, long a favorite target that is easy to demagogue no matter what the evidence to the contrary. Whipping up the...

By Laura Sheahen

"I was ironing and one of the little girl's dresses got burned," says Daya*, a Sri Lankan woman working as a live-in maid for a wealthy family in Kuwait. Daya knew "Madam" -- the wife of the house and her employer -- would be furious. And she...

By John Rivera

A few months ago, a group of neighbors representing some 40 families in the Port-au-Prince community of Delmas 62 banded together and knocked on the door of Catholic Relief Services' office in Delmas 81 to ask for help. Displaced from their homes after the earthquake, they were...

By Luke King, CRS Country Representative in Haiti

It is now almost one year since the earth shook in Haiti, ending so many lives and forever changing many more. So much shifted on January 12, but if you travel the streets of Port-au-Prince it can seem that little has changed...

By Sara Fajardo, CRS regional information officer for eastern and southern Africa. She is based in Nairobi, Kenya.

The world shifted for the Mwanmuyinga brothers on October 24, 2009. Outside their tiny village, Luhimbo 2, in northern Malawi, nobody felt it, but for Yohane and Stefan that fateful Saturday was...

By Lane Hartill

It usually works like this: The call comes in. There's a little small talk about school and work. But Hassan knows what they're after. So he waits for the question.

Then it comes.

"Hassan," they ask, a little hesitant, "they want to hear your story."

Hassan puts...

By Laura Sheahen

Driving through the countryside of East Timor, my Catholic Relief Services colleagues and I pass a volleyball court. "That's from CRS," says Florentino Sarmento, a long-time CRS staffer who has seen violence and war ravage his country. CRS peacebuilding programs often encourage tension-filled communities to build recreational...

The Lusubilo Orphan Care project was founded in Northern Malawi by former teacher Sister Beatrice Chipeta. The project assists children and extended families affected by the AIDS epidemic in the district of Karonga. CRS has partnered with Lusubilo since 2005.

It was the shock of seeing...