For some Americans, post-Labor Day means “back to school,” which can be exciting or stressful or both. Kids or no, the holiday marks the time to get back to business. Turn over a new leaf. Make a fresh start. Take the next level.

To families in developing countries, however, back to school might as well mean a trip to the moon—it’s just as far fetched. Even tuition-free government schools charge enrollment fees, and most require students to

“Back to school” doesn’t’ apply to kids in developing countries who can’t even afford the shoes to walk there. Thanks to supporters of Cross International Catholic Outreach, though, impoverished kids like these in Kenya are getting a quality Catholic education.

wear uniforms and shoes—costs that are out of reach to poor parents who don’t have two pennies to rub together.

It’s a sad “Catch 22.” People who lack education, especially literacy, can’t get a job. So they can’t afford to send their kids to school. Those kids grow up illiterate and unemployed, and the cycle continues. Education breaks that cycle. (Click here to read more about how knowledge combats poverty.)

A family trapped in poverty for generations can lift itself out in one. But they usually need a boost.

What that means in dollars depends on whether a child goes to primary school or college, whether tuition includes room and board, and what country the student lives in. Costs can range anywhere from $16.50 to help an Ethiopian child go to primary school, to $5,500 to put a Haitian student through a year of medical school.

In today’s economy, any amount is nothing to sneeze at, but it’s small when measured against the good it can do.

What a great way to turn over that new leaf—take the next level: Sponsor education for impoverished kids who would otherwise look forward to more of the same. Help break their cycle of poverty for generations to come.

On the day of the monthly food distribution at the Haiti Kobonal Mission, you’ll likely see Hermance St. Preux riding up on his donkey. This good-natured 80-something man can’t walk very far on his own—he lost a leg and relies on crutches or his donkey—but he says there are two things he never misses: Mass and food day at the Haiti Kobonal Mission.

St. Preux is thankful for the food he gets each month from the Haiti Kobonal Mission and the house he received last year.

Both places, church and the mission, are three kilometers from his house. Speaking of his house, Hermance says he was blessed to receive a new home from the mission last fall. Before he moved in with one of his sons and two grandchildren, he waited for Father Glenn Meaux, founder of the Haiti Kobonal Mission, to bless it, and it’s been a wonderful experience ever since. Like anyone Hermance’s age, he says he loves his new home because he can sit on the porch and take in the view, and watch the people come and go on the road to town.

Hermance also takes part in the elderly and destitute feeding program Fr. Meaux runs at the mission. Cross Catholic provides funds for 318 elderly and/or destitute people to receive food staples like cornmeal, black beans, cooking oil, and soap once a month from the mission. With his disability, Hermance isn’t able to work, so the food he receives from Fr. Meaux really helps out. The food distribution day is like a social event for these elderly people—they visit, laugh, and sing. Everyone knows everyone, and it’s a time of happiness and hope.

“The way we are working, we have a lot of people and they respect each other—no pushing, no talking bad about each other,” says Philo-Jacques Bernard, the mission’s director. “You can see also in their face they still have hope.”

Click here to read about the work Cross Catholic is doing in Haiti with the help of our donors and how you can join us. You’re one click away from making a big difference!

This weekend, many Americans will express thanks for their freedom as they celebrate Independence Day. The idea of freedom means different things to different people: freedom from want, freedom from oppression, freedom to succeed, freedom to say and do as we please.

Seeing children thrive in places like Mozambique is proof that Christians can make a difference in lives around the world.

As Christians, we understand freedom in a very exciting way. Ephesians 3:12 says, “In him and through faith in him we may approach God with freedom and confidence.” That means God allows us to come to him directly through prayer—we are free to talk to him, share our lives with him, and worship him with not fear, but joy.

Sadly, many people in our world aren’t free in this sense. About 78 million people don’t have access to the Bible in their native language, and about 1.2 billion people have never heard the gospel. What are we as Christians to do about this? Can we do anything at all?

Here’s a story that can help us take heart: In the Tete Cathedral Parish in northern Mozambique, orphans and vulnerable children often have no choice but to beg in the streets, hoping for a meal. Elisa, who lives in Tete, lost her father as a child, and her mother often couldn’t provide enough food for her and her five siblings.

“Our suffering started,” Elisa said. “Some days we had nothing to eat. Sometimes our mother went to her family to ask for food. Other days we went to our friends’ house. To silence the stomach we drank water and slept without food.”

Thankfully, someone came to her aid: the Tete Center, a day center supported by Cross International Catholic Outreach that provides orphans and vulnerable children with meals, clothing, school supplies, and help with medical expenses. A sister from the Tete Center saw the need in Elisa’s family and invited her and her younger sisters to attend the center. Life has improved greatly since enrolling at the center, she says. In a letter she wrote to Cross Catholic, she described the hope she found at the Tete Center: “Our life changed, and we are not suffering so much anymore. We study and hope for a better future.”

God calls us to use our freedom to give in his name, to offer of ourselves when no one else will. Thanks to gifts from caring American Catholics, children like Prince and Princess experience God’s love through us. Galatians 5:13 says, “You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love.” God calls us to use our freedom for good, for serving each other in his name. He reminds us that we can’t understand freedom only in the sense of what we aren’t forced to do; he asks us to think of freedom in terms of what we are at liberty to do for others.

Click here to read about how you can serve others in God’s name through orphanages and other programs supported by Cross International Catholic Outreach.

First the good news: ten African countries are only half as poor as they were two decades ago.

Young children in sub-Saharan Africa face an uphill battle for survival against poverty, hunger, and infectious diseases.

Now the bad news: child mortality rates have actually gone up, rather than down, in six sub-Saharan nations. Sub-Saharan Africa holds the unfortunate distinction of being the only region in the world that has seen an increase in the mortality rate of children under age 5. That’s according to the U.N. Millennium Development Goals Report Card released on Tuesday.

What makes this report particularly relevant to us at Cross Catholic is that most of our work in Africa is in the sub-Saharan region. Two of the six countries listed in the child-mortality report are Zambia and Kenya, where we are providing food, health care, housing, and education to the poorest of the poor.

Waterborne illnesses and other infectious diseases are leading causes of child deaths in sub-Saharan Africa, while HIV remains a major threat, directly and indirectly, to the health of children. In many cases, lives can be saved by simple improvements in home sanitation and by educating HIV-infected mothers to bottle-feed their infants. Good nutrition plays a vital role in fending off disease, and children must be kept in school because they are the producers of tomorrow’s wealth, which will in turn provide the food, medical care, and healthier way of life their society needs. Cross Catholic is promoting all these developments through partnerships with local Catholic clergy and laypeople who understand Africa’s struggles and know how to make a difference, one family at a time, one village at a time.

Click here for a complete list of all our current Africa projects that you can get involved in today!

This past Sunday, many of us took time to honor that special someone who taught us how to ride our first bicycle, change our first tire, catch our first baseball, and get through life without calling a plumber or asking for directions. Father’s Day was celebrated in 52 countries around the world, from Cuba to Greece to Afghanistan.

Reencontro is saving the lives of orphans and vulnerable children in Mozambique.

The Bible has some important things to say about the value of godly fathers. “A righteous man who walks in his integrity – How blessed are his sons after him.” (Prov. 20:7) Even the Trinity itself is described in terms of a Father-Son relationship.

Sadly, many children have never known a father’s love. Some are orphans, others abandoned, others imprisoned in a home life wrecked by drug and alcohol abuse. The absence of a father figure helps to perpetuate the cycle of poverty in countries where even healthy, intact families struggle to get by. That includes Mozambique, where Cross Catholic is working with a local ministry called Reencontro to provide shelter, food, clothing, health care, and emotional support for AIDS orphans and other vulnerable children.

Thirteen-year-old Alicia came to Reencontro after her father passed away and her family was thrown out on the street. The Catholic-led program gave Alicia’s family a place to stay, saved her little sister Lidia from severe and incapacitating malnutrition, and enrolled Alicia in a Catholic boarding school, where she has learned to trust in her heavenly father to supply all her needs.

“I used to think that I wanted to become a nurse, but now I feel that my vocation is to become a nun,” Alicia said. “So in the future, I want to dedicate my life to the service of the church and to those who suffer.”

Click here to learn more about how Cross Catholic is reaching out to fatherless and vulnerable children.

Some kids will invent almost any excuse to stay home from school. But 10-year-old Bruce Mwansa has a legitimate reason for his imperfect attendance. In fact, no one would blame him if he didn’t show up at all.

Bruce Mwansa, 10, would not be able to go to school without the help of Cross Catholic.

At home, Bruce’s only parental figure is his blind, elderly grandfather. His grandmother is dead, his father ran off long ago, and his mother has been incapable of taking care of her ten children since she succumbed to mental illness. The house is empty and dilapidated, and the garden has become a dried out field of dirt. They are so poor that they eat only one meal a day, which they get by begging in the streets.

Bruce’s blind grandfather (center) expressed his thanks to Cross Catholic for helping the motivated young boy get the education he desires.

That’s why Bruce misses so much school – his family needs him to beg. But despite the hardships of his home life, he still manages to attend class twice a week, so he can be with his friends and get an education that many others do not have.

In the poorest parts of Zambia, it’s not uncommon for children to opt out of school altogether. But those who do go are there because they want to be, and they are willing to walk several miles each morning to get there, because they know how important an education is to their future.

Unlike Zambia’s public schools, enrollment at Bruce’s school is one hundred percent free and includes all supplies. Cross Catholic provides the small salaries of the teachers, so they don’t have to pass on the cost to the students, who have nothing to give. The school is the children’s only hope of escaping squalor and hunger and achieving better lives.

Nine-year-old Joseph may be blind, but don’t think of him as disabled. Think of him as a child with a special skill that most of us don’t have.

Joseph, who is blind, has learned to identify his classmates by touch and smell.

During a visit this month to the Chizombezi Deafblind Center in Malawi, Cross Catholic staff members watched Joseph place his hands on his classmates’ faces and identify each one of them by touch and smell. It was amazing to see how he compensated for his blindness through the use of his other senses.

Joseph’s occasional mistakes were met with laughter by the other students, but they were laughing with, not at, him. The children have learned to have a sense of humor about the challenges they face because they no longer face them alone. That close companionship is what makes the Deafblind Center a truly special place. Disabled children in Malawi are often isolated, ignored, denied opportunities to thrive, and made to feel ashamed of their condition. But the Deafblind Center is a safe haven where they can make friends, be free to express themselves, and do the kinds of things that other kids do – even singing and dancing!

We learned from the sisters who run the Center that when Joseph first arrived, he was barely functional because he wasn’t getting the care and attention he needed at home, being just one of eleven siblings in a very poor family. But today, Joseph has a smile on his face and joy in his heart.

Click here to learn more about this great Cross Catholic project and how it is impacting the lives of children like Joseph.

Our project officers must travel to incredibly remote places to reach some of the projects we support—but they’re well worth the effort. For instance, Claudio, who covers Latin American projects, describes his recent journey to a boarding school in the mountains of Arequipa, Peru. After a long flight, he rode a crowded bus for 12 hours until it literally reached the end of the road.

A happy student at Home of the Incarnate Word boarding school in the remote mountains of Peru, enjoys a hearty meal sponsored by Cross International Catholic Outreach.

Even though the trip to get there was exhausting, Claudio says Home of the Incarnate Word is one of his most favorite projects to visit. The children there exude the joy of the Lord. Besides, their families live even farther away. The children must walk anywhere from several hours to several days to get home. If it weren’t for this boarding school, they would not have an education, and the chance to better their lives.

Likewise, if it weren’t for an aqueduct construction project deep in the forest of rural Dominican Republic, nearly 900 people would not get the chance to have water. For a long time, they couldn’t find anyone to fund the project because it’s too remote. But Cross Catholic did. So Claudio drives several hours across the country to even get to the region. Then the trip to the water project begins—first by 4WD truck, then by mule, then finally on foot.

The trek is daunting. But just think…women and children must make a similar journey every day, sometimes several times a day, just to fetch water for their families—and even then, it’s not always drinkable. This remote project is worth the trip because it will eventually bring clean, safe water directly to their villages instead.

It can be humiliating to be treated as a charity case—the object of someone else’s pity and justification for their pride. Not being able to feed your family can be enough of a blow to your self esteem; but having food (or a house, or other basic need) provided in the wrong spirit can be almost as crushing.

Poor Filipino families participate in the solution to their housing problem by helping construct the homes provided to them.

That is why Cross International Catholic Outreach takes care to maintain the dignity of the poor. Rather than take a “Santa Claus” approach, we lend behind-the-scenes support to local churches and ministries already serving poor communities. A needy family is helped by their own parish priest, for example. This not only builds up a family’s self worth and sense of community, it builds up the local church as well.

Whenever possible, we also require the poor to be part of their own solution. For instance:

• Side-by-side with local Filipino Catholics, poor families in Manila help build and paint the homes they receive through Gawad Kalinga.
• Villagers in the Dominican Republic dig the trenches to make way for a clean-water aqueduct provided through their diocesan charity, FUNDASEP.
• And families who can are asked to contribute a token 20 cents a month for their child’s education at Mine Hara Catholic School.

As Catholics, we are instructed to treat others—including the very poor—as we would want to be treated (Luke 6:31). More than that, in humility we are to consider them better than ourselves. (Philippians 2:3). It is with such humility that Cross International Catholic Outreach strives to honor the poor by helping them in Jesus’ name, and with his love.

Anyone watching the stock market in the past few days knows what a volatile place the financial world is these days. The same is true in politics and world events. In less than a year, a crisis in Turkey has sent shock waves through the entire European Union, and analysts expect a bigger “storm” to come.

Because we are designed by God (unlike the fallible things we create), our closeness to God offers us a unique opportunity to find shelter in this broken world

It is pretty clear that humanity’s faith in financial, political, and international leaders is being challenged — and rightly so. Frankly, these people, nations, and practices have always been fallible because they have been human at their core.  They are as susceptible to the influences of sin as we are ourselves.

In the midst of this turmoil, a friend of mine has just announced a miraculous event — the birth of his daughter.  He shared his joy with me, and sent along pictures of the beautiful girl he and his wife named “Maia.”  He pointed out that the name, unbeknownst to him when it was chosen, means “close to God” in Hebrew.

Considering the condition of the world, I smiled at the irony of that.  Given how traumatic, dangerous, and unpredictable the world is these days, this newborn child reminds us that we should all remain very “close to God.” Because we are designed by God (unlike the fallible things we create), our closeness to God offers us a unique opportunity to find shelter in this broken world and to be enveloped in his perfection, purpose, and peace.

As a Catholic charity, we believe it is important to carry this belief into the mission field too.  We approach the poor with the knowledge that they can find refuge from their plight by drawing closer to God. We share this important truth with them, and we work with priests and nuns overseas to play a role in that ministry too.

This world will never be perfect while sinful humans taint its economy, politics and culture, but we can thank God that all is not lost as long as our Lord stands ready to empower and guide us. That is as true for baby Maia as it is for you, me, and those we minister to overseas. As our Lord expressed it in Matthew 7:24:

“Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock.”

May we all remember this powerful promise as the man-made storms rage overhead!