CRS helps us live as stewards

By Joseph Fleischman

	Stewardship Stewardship: A Way of Life is the diocesan thrust. It invites Catholics to acknowledge that all of life is a gift of God and to respond through prayer, service and sharing. This series will look at ways to do that.

"For the needy shall not always be forgotten, nor the hopes of the poor be in vain."

These powerful words from Psalm 9 came alive for me when I saw the hopes of the poorest of the poor given new life through the work of Catholic Relief Services (CRS) in Madagascar.

As a participant in CRS' Global Fellows Program, I spent two days in Baltimore learning about Catholic social teaching and CRS programming before flying to Madagascar to see the impact of that same programming on the ground.

The Global Fellows Program focuses on encouraging solidarity with the poor and enabling future priests to preach about Catholic social teaching and the work of CRS.

Madagascar, an island nation off the southeast coast of Africa, is one of the poorest nations in the world. Eighty percent of its 18 million people are involved in subsistence agriculture and the per capita income is only $290. More than half of all children suffer stunted growth due to malnutrition and only one out of six children survives past their fifth birthday.

While the Malagasy people are poor economically, they have very rich social and religious lives.

In 99 countries around the world CRS, the international development organization of the U.S. Catholic community, strives to put Catholic Social Teaching into action in eight programming areas: agriculture, community health, education, emergency response, HIV/AIDS, micro-finance, peace building, and safety net programming.

Within the U.S. CRS sponsors Fair Trade programs, poverty awareness programs such as Food Fast, and global solidarity programs such as Operation Rice Bowl.

During my time in Madagascar, I was most impressed by CRS' work with safety net centers, agriculture and community health. At each of the four safety net center orphanages I visited, dozens - if not hundreds - of orphans were cared for by extremely devoted religious sisters and laypeople who worked long hours without worldly reward so that the sick, poor and abandoned children might know God's love and receive the food, shelter and education that God wishes for all of his people. CRS supports over 70 safety net centers in Madagascar alone.

I was greatly pleased at the effectiveness of the agriculture and community health project we saw in a rural village. CRS staff members were teaching local farmers to double their agricultural output through more efficient farming techniques. CRS also had a Food for Work program through which the local people were paid in U.S. Food Aid for completing road improvements that would facilitate moving their produce to market. CRS had brought the community clean water through the installation of two wells, and the malnutrition rate among children had been cut in half through a CRS village garden and a breast-feeding and nutrition program.

To learn more about CRS or to donate to its effective development programming, please visit www.crs.org.

(Fleischman, a member of St. Casimir Parish, Krakow, recently completed his second year of theology as a seminarian for the Green Bay Diocese at Mundelein Seminary.)