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Make Your Coffee Habit Count
Purchase coffee, chocolate and snacks through Catholic Relief Services partner Equal Exchange and make a difference in the lives of farmers.More
Pope Francis and Climate Change: Nurturing Our Human Roots
“Humanity still has the ability to work together in building our common home,” Pope Francis writes in "Laudato Si'," his encyclical on the environment.More
Senegal: Environmental Protection Meets Peacebuilding
Every evening, Toumboul Sané leads a group of volunteers who patrol more than 1,200 acres of forest in Senegal's Casamance region. By standing guard, they are protecting trees—one of the region's most valuable resources—from poachers.
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Savings Groups Nurture Women's Cacti Co-Op
The Cactucito cooperative, a cactus nursery formed by women 19 years ago, is located in Charcos, a community outside of Matehuala, the fourth-largest city in San Luis Potosí, México. After exploring the town, I noticed something glaring—the lack of men. "The community is practically formed by...More
Bees Sweeten Village Relationships
Hundreds of angry bees swarm over the veiled face of Jean-Louis Mendy as he inspects several beehives in Niaguis village, in the Casamance region of Senegal.
Not long ago, it might have been members of neighboring communities angrily confronting Jean-Louis. But the bees are bringing the...More
Welcome to the Family
Welcome to the new crs.org. We’re glad you’re here! As a member of our always growing family, we hope you’ll visit often.
Our website relaunch comes just days before the World Meeting of Families convenes in Philadelphia. Held every 3 years since 1994, the gathering...More
Restoring Coffee Farms in Guatemala
An emerging consensus among scientists blames changing temperatures for the disease that has devastated Central America's coffee production since 2012.
Coffee leaf rust, a fungus known as "roya," caused more than $1 billion in crop losses last year alone, and has cost the region hundreds...More
Improving Child Health and Survival in Guatemala
Jacinta Maroquin Pablo lost five of her children before they turned 2. Rosa Pablo Perez lost her middle child before she turned 3. Neither woman knows why, but they both know they waited too long to see a doctor. Not realizing how sick their children were, neither mother wanted to spend money...More
Farmer-To-Farmer: Achieving Food Independence
Shea Belahi will not be held down by a corporate glass ceiling. In fact, she won't be held down by any ceiling: her office is the open sky. She is fiercely independent and, at age 30, she's her own boss—running her own farm.
"I didn't know what to do with my life....More
Climate Change in Ethiopia: Counting Rains
How do you measure a year? Twelve months? Three hundred and sixty-five days?
In the eastern-most part of Ethiopia, Jemal Bedhaso measures a year not by the number of months or days, but the number of rains.More