Mother’s Day for the year 2021 is celebrated on Sunday, May 9th. It is a time to honor mothers, grandmothers, and great-grandmothers for their contribution to family and society. What about those mothers who are the primary providers for the majority of the world’s 925 million hungry people? Women produce 60 to 80 per cent of all food, both…

Climate change is disrupting our world and the temperature has risen one degree centigrade and it will not go back. We have reached a point of no return and that is a security risk to the planet and to every nation. We can stop it rising higher. One of the grave security risks is the…

In the Autumn of 2011, the Occupy movement was growing like a weed – quickly and strongly. In groups as small as two and as large as 200,000, people gathered in public spaces around the world to challenge an economic system that has long abandoned the majority for the profit of a few, creating what…

In preparation for the 2021 Financing for Development Forum at the United Nations (UN), the NGO Committee on FfD, a substantive committee of CoNGO (Conference of NGOs) held a virtual working breakfast briefing and interactive discussion on January 15 with the Concept Note The Recovery We Want: For People and Planet. Since 2018, the Committee…

International organisms during this pandemic are under scrutiny and surely for many and good reasons. However, even in the weed fields some good wheat can be harvest. The United Nations has provided many juridical tools and agreements among its member States that support a claim for social justice. The IMF (International Monetary Fund), for its…

Advocacy is a process to ensure change where there is injustice, providing a solution to a problem, and building support for acting on both the problem and the solution. Its aims, among others, are social changes in attitudes and relationships. However, advocating for the poor is far from lobbying for an ideology. This clear divergence…

In recent years, many faith-based organizations have made bold statements about climate justice being a key component of their faith and stewardship of Earth and her people. Bill McKibben, a long-time environmentalist, in September 2019 was quoted in The Washington Post: “The gospel call to love one’s neighbor is, in our time and place, most fully…

We are in Pikine, a Dakar suburb, Senegal. Father Armel Duteil, is the one telling the story. He is an 80-year-old Spiritan missionary. French by origin, he spent much of his life in Africa – Democratic Republic of Congo, Ivory Coast and finally Senegal. Many missionaries do not believe in emigration as the answer to…

In his Easter Urbi et Orbi message, Pope Francis urged all nations to “meet the greatest needs of the moment through the reduction, if not the forgiveness, of the debt burdening the balance sheets of the poorest nations”. While poor countries face a double threat – the COVID-19 pandemic and the debt crisis, it is…

With the declaration of the health emergency in Ecuador, all activities and services taking care of poor people were suspended. The experience of Caritas’ dining room, “Oscar Romero”, in Manta (Ecuador). The sense of solidarity required us to resume assistance to individuals and families, implementing a safe and practical method to deliver hot meals to…

St. Basil the Great, in the 4th century would call money ‘the devil’s dung,’  an epithet reused by Pope Francis last year. Oscar Wilde said ironically, “When I was young I thought that money was the most important thing in life; now that I am old I know that it is.” Saint Basil explained the…

One of the most important aims of advocacy is building strong democracy and democratic organizations to hold those in power accountable, expanding citizen’s understanding of how power operates. Many scientific and humanitarian reasons are impelling public authorities to impose on citizens an abundance of controls, restrictions of many kinds ranging from moving, sport, fitness to…