Cross International Catholic Outreach was founded in 2001 with a staff of three sharing one donated office space. Today the organization has more than 100 employees, and has served the poor in more than 30 countries through more than $1 billion in donations over the last decade.
I have a friend who used to work in the fitness industry, selling exercise equipment. He told me that his company put almost all of its marketing budget and sales energy into selling products during December and January. Why? – because New Year’s resolutions about physical fitness are what stimulate most of their profits.
Did you know there are 33.3 million people currently infected with HIV? Did you know that 2.5 million of those people are children? Did you know that the poorest parts of the world are disproportionately plagued by this devastating – but preventable – disease?
Quick: imagine for a second that you didn’t know how to talk to other people. Imagine that you could see what was going on around you, but nothing made sense. It would feel like stepping into a “darkness” of confusion, fear, and frustration.
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.
Right now, people in Haiti are busy clearing away rubble from the January earthquake in trucks and wheelbarrows. There’s much work to be done, but Port-au-Prince and the surrounding towns are slowly putting buildings, shops, and homes back together. Yet underneath the surface lies things that are still broken and will take years to heal, like the hearts of the survivors who’ve lost so much.