NEW YORK, N.Y. – Even as voluntary organizations help New York City with its long-term recovery from Superstorm Sandy, preparing the city for the next hurricane or other disaster is already high on their agenda.  That was evident August 7 at one in a series of forums for leaders of community-based long-term recovery groups from the city’s five boroughs. The …

Thanks to an imaginative “matching grant” challenge, United Church of Christ congregations across the United States are outdoing themselves to make CWS School Kits – urgently needed by Church World Service to meet demand. Following the two latest shipments totaling 30,000 CWS School Kits to partner IOCC for children in Syria and Bosnia-Herzegovina, Church World Service has just over 5,000 …

It’s pretty hard to look at agricultural work and the health care industry and not find immigrants, many of whom are undocumented. Because they’re doing hard, often invisible work and because they are commonly dismissed due to their immigration status, we as a society fail to protect these workers while on the job. WeCount! In Homestead, Florida and the Filipino …

Safe water was hard to come by for the residents of two villages in Kayin State, Myanmar, who were used to walking miles to fetch water from shallow, unclean wells and streams. “It was very difficult for them to get safe drinking water especially during dry season. Some people had to walk to get water for more than two hours,” …

The current immigration debate can appear a little short on hope, being characterized by partisan paralysis in Congress, a presidential effort to expand the government’s ability to deport children, and the loud shouts of those hoping to benefit from open trade while limiting the movement of people. However, activists of faith in Portland, Ore. are making a positive difference in …

When public health volunteers in the remote villages of Cambodia’s Central and North central provinces go knocking on villagers’ doors their objective is to encourage people to come to the pagoda to receive valuable public health information. The outreach is part of CWS’s Village-based Community Development project in which government health workers travel to villages far outside major cities to …

In the Vietnam community of Muong Te, among the poorest districts in the country, parents of kindergarten students in Nam Cau village have started along the path to improved nutrition after having completed a training for awareness raising in food nutrition and a cooking demonstration featuring a nutritious rice soup. “Twenty-three villagers, mostly women and their little children, and four …

“I love bumping into Brooklyn and Staten Island.  I don’t see Queens enough.” That was Manhattan talking – specifically Lilah Mejia, Coordinator of Lower East Side Ready, the Superstorm Sandy long-term recovery group for that Manhattan neighborhood.  Mejia was among participants in a June 18 strategic recovery planning forum held in New York City and hosted by Church World Service …

If you live anyplace outside a war zone the idea that you or your family might fall victim to a car bomb or some other attack likely is not a real concern for you.  But if you were living in Baghdad, Iraq at the height of the violence there security might well be a big concern. It was for Maher …

When tornados and severe storms struck Alabama in late April, Celesta Bridgeforth of Athens, Ala., flashed back to how upsetting and disorienting it had been to lose her home to a tornado in 2011. “’Brain scramble’ is what you feel,” she said.  “One minute I was standing in my kitchen and the next moment the house was in sticks.  I …