You can excuse any residents of Canyon Lake in central Texas Hill Country for referring to their town’s annual hunger-fighting walk as, “That dam walk.” The description is hardly a pejorative when the route of the walk indeed does take walkers straight across Canyon Lake Dam, which the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers built years ago to reduce flooding of …

For many of us, taking a sick child to the doctor is a routine occurrence.  But what if there are no doctors?  No medicines?  No hospitals? One young mother in Segram, Pakistan, knows the answer.  Even when she was fortunate enough to have a little money, Sadia’s only option was to visit what she called “a quack doctor” who charged …

As if the challenges of putting their lives back together after a devastating earthquake weren’t already big enough, Haitian women are enduring an epidemic of rape and sexual violence. The 900,000 population that lives in tents in spontaneous settlements is particularly at risk owing to precarious living conditions.  But women all over Haiti are vulnerable, because normal life has been …

CHISINAU, MOLDOVA — Church World Service is joining global recognition of World Water Day (March 22) with co-sponsorship of a major conference today in Chisinau, Moldova, Implementation of the Human Right to Water and Sanitation in Moldova, which will focus on the international Protocol on Water and Health. “Access to clean water is one of the main problems facing the …

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 …