CRS

Vaviroa’s story

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Photo by Heidi Yanulis for Catholic Relief Services

Photo by Heidi Yanulis for Catholic Relief Services

Vaviroa is a smart, hardworking woman — with four children to feed. Though she had been raising her children alone for many years, their family was doing very well. They ate crops grown from Vaviroa’s family farm, and they even made money selling extra vegetables in nearby villages.

Then, in 2013, Cyclone Haruna hit, destroying most of northern Tulear, the part of Madagascar where Vaviroa and her children lived. Her fields flooded, and her crops died. With no way to feed her family, Vaviroa needed some help. She was already a great farmer — she just needed extra support to get back on her feet. And that extra support came in the form of seeds.

CRS’ seed fair program gives vouchers to farmers and their families so they can buy seeds, farm tools and livestock at local seed fairs. The goods they buy help them replant and rebuild their communities. The fairs also give farmers a chance to sell their crops in a safe place to people who need them. And these seed fairs help the environment by giving farmers the tools they need to care for God’s creation.

With the seeds she received at a CRS seed fair, Vaviroa has been able to replant her fields. Once again, her children are receiving the nutrients they need to grow and are able to attend school. Vaviroa is proud of all she’s accomplished-and looking forward to the next planting season.

Read more stories about how Lenten alms become lifesaving aid at crsricebowl.org.

Eric ClaytonEric Clayton is CRS Rice Bowl Program Officer at Catholic Relief Services (CRS).

This Lent, USCCB is partnering with CRS to bring you Stories of Hope from CRS Rice Bowl, the Lenten faith-in-action program for families and faith communities. Through CRS Rice Bowl, we hear stories from our brothers and sisters in need worldwide, and devote our Lenten prayers, fasting and gifts to change the lives of the poor.

Mayra’s story: Hungering to Learn in Honduras

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Mayra Martinez, 11, and her grandmother Lucía Mancía, 62, showing her math and language diplomas from the Peer to Peer Tutoring program given by her tutor, Elías Fabricio. Photo by Oscar Leiva/Silverlight for Catholic Relief Services

Mayra Martinez, 11, and her grandmother Lucía Mancía, 62, showing her math and language diplomas from the Peer to Peer Tutoring program given by her tutor, Elías Fabricio. Photo by Oscar Leiva/Silverlight for Catholic Relief Services

Two years ago, Mayra was not a star student. She was very shy in the classroom and struggled with simple math and reading lessons. She often missed homework assignments and, some days, did not go to school.

Her teacher noticed and enrolled Mayra in the school’s tutoring program. In the months that followed, Mayra and Fabricio, her tutor and classmate, spent many afternoons practicing reading and writing stories together. They made up games to practice math. And when they were done, they jumped rope and played in their neighborhood. In the process, the two became good friends.

“Fabricio never looked down on me because I had trouble learning,” says Mayra. “He always treated me well.”

The extra attention was what Mayra really needed. She lives with her grandmother, Lucia, who works hard to take care of Mayra. She picks coffee on a nearby farm and does laundry to earn money to put food on the table. But this means she doesn’t always have time to help Mayra with her school work. In fact, like many people her age, Lucia cannot read.

That’s why Fabricio’s help was so important. Today, Mayra is proud of her reading and math skills. She does her homework and goes to class on time. She is more confident and has a new group of friends.

Mayra wants to be a teacher one day. But first, she will become a tutor so she can help her classmates-just as Fabricio helped her.

Read more stories about how Lenten alms become lifesaving aid at crsricebowl.org.

Eric ClaytonEric Clayton is CRS Rice Bowl Program Officer at Catholic Relief Services (CRS).

This Lent, USCCB is partnering with CRS to bring you Stories of Hope from CRS Rice Bowl, the Lenten faith-in-action program for families and faith communities. Through CRS Rice Bowl, we hear stories from our brothers and sisters in need worldwide, and devote our Lenten prayers, fasting and gifts to change the lives of the poor.

Odette’s story: Hungering for a Healthy Start in Rwanda

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Jeanne Uwimbabazi smiles at her daughter Elissa Izibyose while feeding her porridge during a health and nutrition screening near Buruba Village, Muhanga District, Rwanda. Photo by Laura Elizabeth Pohl for Catholic Relief Services

Jeanne Uwimbabazi smiles at her daughter Elissa Izibyose while feeding her porridge during a health and nutrition screening near Buruba Village, Muhanga District, Rwanda. Photo by Laura Elizabeth Pohl for Catholic Relief Services

Odette’s daughter Olga could have easily become one of the many children in Rwanda who don’t receive the nutrients they need to develop and grow.

But Odette started working with Catholic Relief Services even before she gave birth to ensure her child would get the care she needed during the crucial first 1,000 days of life. The nutrition a child receives from the time he or she is in the womb until his or her second birthday can mean the difference between a promising future and one of poor health and limited opportunities.

Catholic Relief Services is working with communities in Rwanda to end child malnutrition by supporting health and nutrition programs, and teaching families to grow crops that add nutritious variety to their meals.

Because poverty is a major cause of malnutrition, CRS helps families find opportunities to earn an income. With a loan from her microfinance group, Odette started a business selling agricultural fertilizer so she could support her family.

Odette attends weekly classes that are helping her grow healthy crops on her farm. She’s also taking courses on how to prepare nutritious meals from those crops. And she takes Olga to regular well-baby visits to measure her weight and growth, and ensure she is healthy.

This year, Olga will reach a milestone: Her second birthday. Because Odette has been feeding her a variety of nutritious foods-many of which were grown in the family garden-Olga is growing up strong and healthy.

Read more stories about how Lenten alms become lifesaving aid at crsricebowl.org.

Eric ClaytonEric Clayton is CRS Rice Bowl Program Officer at Catholic Relief Services (CRS).

This Lent, USCCB is partnering with CRS to bring you Stories of Hope from CRS Rice Bowl, the Lenten faith-in-action program for families and faith communities. Through CRS Rice Bowl, we hear stories from our brothers and sisters in need worldwide, and devote our Lenten prayers, fasting and gifts to change the lives of the poor.

Hongkham’s story: Hungering to Give Back in Laos

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Hongkham Phengsaphone, age 36, holds a bowl of lentils at the Nahangnoy Primary School, where CRS’ LEAPS program provides students with a free school lunch. Photo by Jim Stipe/Catholic Relief Services

Hongkham Phengsaphone, age 36, holds a bowl of lentils at the Nahangnoy Primary School, where CRS’ LEAPS program provides students with a free school lunch. Photo by Jim Stipe/Catholic Relief Services

Hongkham lives close to where she grew up in Nongdeune, Laos, with her husband and their five boys. Her husband is a farmer, and her family relied on his crops for food and income. When Hongkham’s husband got sick, the family had to sell a lot of what they owned-including their land-to pay for medicine. Soon, the family faced real hunger.

Then Hongkham found an opportunity to use her love of cooking to help her family and community through CRS’ school literacy and hunger program. She volunteers as a cook at her children’s school, which provides free school lunches for students, literacy training for teachers and principals, and nutrition training. Hongkham uses that training in the school kitchen-and when she’s cooking for her family at home.

She also receives a monthly ration of food to take home, which helps her family grow and thrive. But the best part about CRS’ program is that students are learning to read and write. Hongkham says that before the program started, students would go home and often wouldn’t return for afternoon classes, but now, students return to school after morning classes to receive their free and nutritious lunch. She even sees the change in her own children-in their studies and their health.

Good nutrition has made a real difference in the lives of the people of Laos.

Read more stories about how Lenten alms become lifesaving aid at crsricebowl.org.

Eric ClaytonEric Clayton is CRS Rice Bowl Program Officer at Catholic Relief Services (CRS).

 

This Lent, USCCB is partnering with CRS to bring you Stories of Hope from CRS Rice Bowl, the Lenten faith-in-action program for families and faith communities. Through CRS Rice Bowl, we hear stories from our brothers and sisters in need worldwide, and devote our Lenten prayers, fasting and gifts to change the lives of the poor.

Maria’s story: Hungering for Opportunity in Colombia

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Portrait of Mar’a Yelud Leyt—n Ch‡vez, 18, in charge of the Borderlands project coffee quality lab at Pasto, Nari–o in Colombia. She is member of a displaced family. Her father fled Nari–o for La Florida escaping death threats from paramilitaries. She is studying an online coffee management technical career and helping her family with her new job. Photo by Oscar Leiva/Silverlight for Catholic Relief Services

Portrait of Maria Yelud Leyton Chavez, 18, in charge of the Borderlands project coffee quality lab at Pasto, Nario in Colombia. Photo by Oscar Leiva/Silverlight for Catholic Relief Services

Fighting between armed forces made life in Cumbitara, Colombia, dangerous for Maria and her family-so dangerous that 8 years ago they were forced to relocate. They left their home one morning with nothing but a suitcase of clothes.

It wasn’t easy making a new life in Nariño, a region of Colombia known for its coffee. People made fun of Maria and her family because they were outsiders. It was also hard to find work, and Maria’s father left home for months at a time to do dangerous work in a mine. Continue reading →

Lent 101: Prayer, Fasting and Almsgiving

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Eric ClaytonMy wife and I stood in our little kitchen, washing and drying our dishes. It was Ash Wednesday. We had gone to different Masses that day and were commenting on the homilies we had each heard. The priest who had celebrated the Mass at which my wife had been present had reflected on the value of fasting, on how it is something to be undertaken with joy. So often, we’re tempted to take on a fast that makes us gloomy, unpleasant people, the priest had said. When he had given up coffee one year, it became less of a fast for him and more of a penance for those around him.

Fasting is always a funny thing. Each year, my wife and I spend those last few weeks of Ordinary Time prior to Lent pouring over the different fasts we can undertake, what we will do for Lent. But that year, standing in the kitchen, dripping dishes in hand, we realized something. God is perfectly clear about the kind of fasting we’re asked to undertake. In fact, God has been clear for thousands of years—and God reminds us each and every Ash Wednesday with distinct clarity through the words of Isaiah:

Is this not, rather, the fast that I choose: releasing those bound unjustly, untying the thongs of the yoke; Setting free the oppressed, breaking off every yoke? Is it not sharing your bread with the hungry, bringing the afflicted and the homeless into your house; Clothing the naked when you see them, and not turning your back on your own flesh? (58: 6-7)

Just so. The call to charity and justice is unavoidable. It is, it would seem, God’s deepest desire for our own individual fasts. Swearing off social media is good in so far as it frees me to help another. Buying one less coffee a day can be a fruitful exercise if it means that the money not spent goes instead to a worthy cause. Honing my own self-discipline is important and valuable as long as it better enables me to fulfill those words of Jesus: Love God, and love your neighbor as yourself.

If we keep this in mind, then our Lenten practice of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving necessarily becomes other focused. Our prayer keeps us mindful of God at work in the world—in our lives and the lives of others—and poises us to act in line with the working of the Spirit. Our fasting becomes an exercise in self-emptying, of preventing the me-ness from preoccupying our minds; rather, it is to allow God to work within us, focusing our attention on another. And our almsgiving becomes the necessary response, the filling up and cascading over of love for neighbor, a desire to, in our self-emptied state, give of ourselves to those most in need.

Is this not the path that Jesus walked, that same path that we prayerfully consider throughout the season of Lent? Paul writes to the Philippians:

Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness; and found human in appearance, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross. (2:7-8)

So, then, the challenge for each of us this Lent is to reflect on our own practice of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving and assess how our emptied selves are best put at the service of others. Bombarded by the international crisis facing us each day, I would suggest that our Lenten practice demands a global lens. How can these pillars of Lent lead us deeper into a spirituality of global solidarity? How can we give of ourselves to God’s one, human family, a family that crosses borders, cultures, and religions?

Certainly, this is not a challenge to be undertaken lightly—or completed quickly. But we can make it a goal of our Lenten journey to take a single step along the road of global solidarity. I offer, as a roadmap, CRS Rice Bowl, a program that aims to usher us further down that path, to close the gaps that separate us from our brothers and sisters around the world, to prepare in us a heart that is fertile and ready to receive and act upon the global mission of the Church. Your first stop on the journey might be crsricebowl.org or CRS Rice Bowl app, for your iOS and Android device.

But don’t let that be your last stop. Where will your prayer, fasting and almsgiving take you this Lent? Perhaps, more significantly, when these 40 days have ended, where then will you be prepared to go?

Eric Clayton is CRS Rice Bowl Program Officer at Catholic Relief Services

Lent: A Time to Live Mercy

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Joan RosenhauerThe Sixth Station of the Cross speaks in a special way to how we live out mercy during Lent. In this Station we see Veronica not just wiping the face of Christ, but reaching out—at some danger to herself—to touch Jesus, to be present to a man who was suffering. Why would she do this? What difference was she really making? After all, Jesus was on his way to die—a simple cloth wasn’t going to change that.

So often, we are tempted to feel this way as we look out at our world so full of tragedy. We think, our little gesture won’t amount to anything—a few dollars here, some time spent there. What difference will that make? At those moments, we should remind ourselves of Veronica. Veronica was quite literally present to the suffering Christ. She reached out to him, and he reached back. That’s what we’re called to do. We should never underestimate the value of simply being present, of reaching out in mercy and love to another human being, someone made in the image and likeness of God. And we must allow those whom we serve to reach back, to touch our hearts and our lives. As we are the hands of Christ, so, too, are those whom we serve.

This is what the Holy Father has called us to reflect on during this Year of Mercy. This is what we do each Lent. We call it the CRS Rice Bowl Effect.

How can a cardboard box help you touch the face of Christ during Lent?

Meet Mayra. She’s a young student from Honduras whose life has been changed thanks to the prayers, fasting and almsgiving of Catholics in the United States. She’s also one of the people featured in CRS Rice Bowl this year. This video has more.

You saw how CRS Rice Bowl has given her the tools and confidence she needs to succeed in school—even in a country beset by poverty, violence and hardship. Mayra has received her diploma and is now looking to tutor her peers. And she’s made a new friend in Fabricio.

In Mayra, we see Christ—and we reach out across culture and countries to be present. That’s the CRS Rice Bowl Effect.

How does Christ reach back? What effect does Mayra have on us?

Let’s take a moment to reflect on the image below.

Photo Credit: Catholic Relief Services

When I first saw this image, it made me pause. It’s a beautiful photograph, artistically done, with good lighting and excellent composition. But more importantly, what really touches the viewer is that it quite clearly shows love, the love shared between grandmother and granddaughter. I saw this photograph before I had heard Mayra’s story, before I’d met her or her grandmother. But what is evident in this image comes through clearly in her story: we see the love of a grandmother for her granddaughter. We see a grandmother who will sacrifice to help improve the life of someone she loves. Perhaps, we even glimpse the merciful love of God, a God who loves and sacrifices no matter the cost.

That, too, is the CRS Rice Bowl Effect—and it’s powerful. It’s inspiring to me to see the hard work of this elderly woman. She challenges me in my own life—to love, to sacrifice. And, she challenges me in my own relationship with God.

This Lent, I hope you will share the CRS Rice Bowl Effect with your families and the communities you serve. Encourage them not just to reach out to those in need through their Lenten almsgiving, but, through prayerful reflection, to allow the stories of these women and men to touch their own lives.

Then we, too, can truly be like Veronica, encountering the suffering Christ. And we, too, can live Pope Francis’ call to mercy.

Joan Rosenhauer is Executive Vice President, US Operations at Catholic Relief Services