Photo by Benny Manser/CRS
When you support Catholic Relief Services, you ensure that our mission is carried out in the following key areas:
Livelihoods and Agriculture
Raising Chickens in El Salvador: Severe weather patterns have changed more than just the landscape for people in El Salvador. Crops have become unpredictable—but with help from CRS, farmers can keep and care for their own chickens, creating a sustainable food source for their families. Sandra, featured in this video, and many more have benefited from learning to tend their own flocks.
Building Better Futures in Zimbabwe: Supporters like you are helping Zimbabwean farmers rise out of poverty and toward prosperous agricultural livelihoods. Environmental challenges abound in the region, including droughts, which threaten farmers’ ability to feed their animals and maintain herds. Through CRS, you help these farmers adapt to severe weather patterns, increase nutrition stability and improve their incomes—watch the video to learn more about how you are changing lives.
Health and Education
Improving Health and Nutrition in the Democratic Republic of Congo: In the Mukumbi Health Zone, CRS is using a multi-pronged approach to reduce the prevalence of malnutrition. The Tudikolela project, featured in this video, supports farmers with increasing crop yields, helps families grow their own food and teaches mothers how to screen their own children for malnutrition at home. Each of these three facets helps ensure child and family nutrition improves at every stage.
Promoting Child Development through Village Health and Nutrition Days: Meet Elinah Ezekia Mtawa and many others in Tanzania whose families have benefitted from health and nutrition education in this video. Village health and nutrition days provide locally accessible, transformative resources and education to address child growth challenges and essential health needs. Thanks to supporters like you, this program has helped reduce the child stunting rate in Mbeya, Tanzania, by 4% since 2016. Your support changes lives.
How a School Canteen Improves Education in Togo: In Togo, as in many places around the world, child hunger in schools is a real problem. Even children who are thrilled to learn will struggle to concentrate in the face of hunger. Thanks to supporters like you, school canteens like the one featured in this video help fulfill children’s nutritional needs during the school day—improving not only their health and well-being, but also their learning outcomes and the school environment.
Supporting Early Childhood Care in Lesotho: By supporting Catholic Relief Services, you make it possible for accessible child care to exist in Lesotho. Opportunities to work and earn a sustainable income open up for women like the one featured in this video, thanks to the “Whose Child Is This?” program. Without this high-quality early child care and child development program, mothers would often spend an entire income on child care or be unable to work at all. Watch the video to learn more about how you empower mothers and support young children in Lesotho.
Life-Changing Water Access
Honduran Farmers Address Water Challenges with Support from CRS: Your support helps CRS address the root causes with local solutions. Honduran farmers, like many around the world, are facing increasing threats from changing weather patterns and natural disasters. Water shortages made it nearly impossible to produce crops at home, creating the pressure to migrate to find work for farmers like Nery García Martínez, featured in this video. With support from CRS, the farmers themselves assessed the problem, designed a solution, and were empowered to implement it. When farmers can produce at home, the need to migrate ends and families can stay connected. Your support transforms lives like Nery’s.
Journey of Water in Ethiopia: Hawwa Mussa, featured in this video, is an Ethiopian mother of six whose life has changed thanks to your support. Much of life for women in her village revolved around collecting water, day in and day out, until CRS and partner organizations changed that. The change in access to water has made life safer, opened doors to new sources of income, enabled children to attend school, created reliable sources of food, and allowed women like Hawwa to dream big. Watch the video to learn more about how life has changed for Hawwa and others.
Emergency Response and Recovery
Photo by Edu Mungga/CRS
Disaster Risk Reduction in Indonesia: When Indonesia’s Mount Lewotobi Laki Laki, located on the Ring of Fire on the island of Flores, violently erupted, it caused significant damage and loss. Flores is no stranger to volcanic activity.
Days before the eruption, a village disaster committee in Dulipali—the town nearest to the volcano—was already on high alert. They monitored the situation, communicated with village officials, and informed community members of the impending danger. When the eruption occurred, committee members worked with government officials and other local organizations to quickly mobilize the villagers for evacuation and save lives.
Read More
Fransiskus Pukakaha, who leads the disaster committee in Dulipali, recounted being at home with his wife and two children the night of the eruption.
“Near midnight, we heard a boom like an explosion,” he says. “We thought it was the sound of lightning or thunder. A few minutes later, I heard rocks scattering and hitting the roof of the house. I directed my wife and children to stand near the wall of the house to avoid the volcanic rock fragments.”
Fransiskus and other community members received training through a disaster risk reduction project led by Catholic Relief Services and our local partners and funded by Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies. Through this project, a committee was formed to prepare for sudden disasters.
“After the disaster committee was formed, we received training and conducted a village disaster assessment in June 2024,” says Fransiskus. “We mapped and determined the assembly point, and this really helped us save ourselves.”
After the eruption, six camps for evacuees were established. Fransiskus and his team played a crucial role in organizing displaced people, distributing relief items and ensuring access to essential services. They prioritized support for vulnerable people, such as those with disabilities, the elderly, children and pregnant women.
In addition to managing the immediate disaster response, the committee is collaborating with the Indonesian National Disaster Management Agency and the local government to identify and safely relocate people living in high-risk zones.
“Our crops have been scorched and destroyed by the volcanic ash,” Fransiskus says. “As rain begins to fall and shoots have started to grow, we must persevere. In the future, we are determined to restore our farms and businesses in our new relocation site.”
CRS is coordinating closely with Caritas Indonesia, the local partner Yayasan Pengkajian dan Pengembangan Sosial, village disaster committees, and others to provide emergency relief to survivors of the volcano. Assistance includes counseling, shelter, food and access to clean water.
Photo by Caritas Spes
Rebuilding Homes and Supporting War Recovery Efforts in Ukraine: On the morning of February 24, 2022, Tetiana Pikalo received a phone call from her relatives in Kharkiv, Ukraine, informing her that the war had begun. Tetiana heard the words, but they were hard to comprehend. “Of course, there was panic at first,” Tetiana says. “What to do, where to go. My husband said you should leave, and I will stay. But for me, it wasn’t even a discussion. I wasn’t going to leave our home and our animals.”
Read More
The family decided to stay together, and they spent the next six months trying to make do as Russians shelled Ukrainian positions near their village. In April, a shell crashed into the gazebo in their yard where the family would sit and drink tea and coffee in the morning. In May, a second shell struck their property, damaging their roof, bedroom wall, and windows. Fortunately, Tetiana and her family were sheltering in the cellar of their home and were not injured.
Since 2022, when Ukraine reclaimed the area and drove Russian forces out, Tetiana and her family have channeled their energy into rebuilding their life. Tetiana volunteers and works at a store in Korobochkyne, and her husband, a builder, has been repairing damaged walls within their house. CRS and Caritas Spes Ukraine have registered Tetiana’s family for home repair assistance, with the priority work being the repair of their damaged roof. “We’ll keep living, keep moving forward,” Tetiana says. “Victory will be with us. We’ll rebuild our home. In the center of our village, you see people now, you see the cars, the stores are opening, and it really makes you happy.”
Become a Catholic Relief Services Insider
Do you want to receive exclusive email updates directly from Catholic Relief Services?
Get direct and instant access to a member of our team who will share information about your impact, project outcomes and stories of our work around the world.