CWS Director of Immigration and Refugee Programs Erol Kekic explains how people are increasingly forced to move because of a lack of water. Do people really become refugees because they don’t have access to water? Many people are forced to abandon their traditional habitats because of the lack of drinking water.  Due to the climate change and decrease in arable …

Access to clean, safe water doesn’t take massive investment in many communities where water is scarce.  One characteristic of CWS work around the world is small-scale solutions that are guided, developed and sustained in each community.  Here are a few examples of how we’re working around the world, where small projects make a big impact. Collecting water drained time and …

Half a world away from the budget battle in Washington, Aliansa do Rego lives in the country of Timor-Leste. Aliansa works alongside CWS staff to help her community learn new farming techniques. “This was the first assistance we received,” Aliansa says.  “Seeds for water spinach and tomatoes, and tools from CWS.  This is our livelihood.” CWS helps thousands of people …

I love hiking.  I can hike day or night, easy terrain or tough.  You name it, I’m game. But hiking for me is a pleasure, something I do to help relieve stress, to work on gaining some peace and perspective.  And it certainly is not something I do while struggling to carry heavy jugs of water home.  But for many …

WASHINGTON — In testimony before the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission in Washington this morning, the head of international humanitarian agency Church World Service cited the “extraordinary meaning and power of water” and described by contrast the lack of safe water and sanitation for one-eighth of the world’s people as “repugnant to our sense of justice and fairness in human …

Kendra Rinas, on staff with the CWS Resettlement Support Center (formerly Overseas Processing Entity) for sub-Saharan Africa, spent February to June 2009 in Chad helping prepare refugees’ case files for final review by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.  Then, in March 2010, CWS relocated her to Chad, where she leads the work to interview additional resettlement candidates and start …

On a snowy Saturday afternoon in December, excitement and music filled the air at a neighborhood community center in Louisville, Kentucky. Twenty-three refugee youth from across the city gathered, with their tutor/mentors, to create their own drums, explore the relationship between rhythm and beat, and make music together as one around an international drumming circle. All of the youth are …

In the hills of northern Haiti, along the U.S. Gulf Coast, to the beaches of Indonesia and the mountains of Pakistan, people are better off because Church World Service makes disaster preparedness part of its ongoing work. “They say, ‘an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,’” says Aaron Tate, CWS’s Haiti earthquake response coordinator.  “That’s why, even …

Investment ideas…tax saving techniques…planning for retirement…suggestions for a truly thoughtful will…the best assets to use for charitable gifts…all of these planning concepts are tremendously important to friends of Church World Service.  In fact, they’re so important that we are eager to provide reliable tax and financial information as part of our long-range development activities. As is the case with most …

Hope! Things do get better. When we work together, when we believe in the possibility of change, we can take tremendous strides forward. Words and tenets I believe in…particularly as I reflect on the growing number of disasters globally and a time when disaster preparedness and mitigation are of key importance to communities everywhere. Growing up on a homestead along …