Human Encounter With Hurt, Healing and Hope

By Gerard Lambert
CRS Program Officer
Volunteer Program

In these pages of reflections, stories and experiences of Catholic Relief Services volunteers is the human encounter with hurt, healing and hope.

Seeing through the CRS partner organization's eyes is what a volunteer does as she learns from the partner about promoting dignity through sensitivity in serving people with HIV or AIDS in The Gambia.

A volunteer in Tanzania describes her poignant introduction to the HIV pandemic and how she "held the hand of a woman, skin and bones, too frail to hold her head up. She had energy only to let her tears fall to her cheeks."

Another volunteer reflects on crowded cemeteries in Zambia with graves not predating 1997.

Still another volunteer, in describing her experience with two bouts of malaria, no running water, and constant language misunderstandings, characterizes these "significant struggles" as a privilege through which profound insight has emerged. "I have come to be with the people of Africa. Live it and breath it, and not try to change it."

A volunteer couple in Malawi finds themselves deeply immersed in service to people living with HIV and AIDS. Poverty is ever present in Madagascar and the volunteer serving there asks what her response to poverty should be.

A walk in a slum with Ann, who has a four-year-old son, the product of rape, is the backdrop for a volunteer who sees the difference that CRS is making in people's lives by supporting girls' education in Kenya.

A teacher's gifts from 35 years of teaching transform the sacred space of the classroom in a small village in The Gambia.

A volunteer in Uganda witnesses the successes that microfinance projects have on families and communities.

Finally, transformation from visitor to a member of the community is a volunteer's experience in Cameroon.

The U.S. Component

Volunteers shared some reflections in these pages about their outreach to the U.S. Catholic community and advocacy for the poor during their six months serving as CRS Volunteers in the United States.

A volunteer couple in Kentucky compellingly shared how their message resonated with a member of the audience. "In Kentucky the day following our presentation a mother in the audience wrote to tell us that there is a name for the way she wants to lead her life and share with her family and that name is Catholic Social Teaching."

A Midwest Region volunteer became a Fair Trade Ambassador for CRS and helped her diocese design a robust Fair Trade Plan.

A volunteer who served in the CRS Northeast office conducted analysis and a comparison of food issues and HIV and AIDS interventions in Ghana and Philadelphia.

The reflections in these pages are stories of accompaniment, of walking side by side with our sisters and brothers.

Accompaniment is the invitation that a humble walk extends to its readers in this human encounter with hurt, healing and hope.