“A couple of years ago the responses we saw from local communities hosting Syrian refugees—not the government, but just your average person—very impressive,” says Daryl Grisgraber, senior advocate at Refugees International. “But four years on that can only be kept up for so long.” More →

March 13, 2015

Read more of Judy Valente’s May 4, 2006 interview in Chicago with Jean Vanier, founder of L’Arche, a worldwide network of communities for the mentally disabled. More →

March 13, 2015

Jockin Arputham started his campaign to build a network among the urban poor by organizing a critical mass of India’s slum-dwelling population, especially women’s collectives. Today they pressure local governments to be more responsive to their needs, especially toilet and sanitation facilities. More →

January 30, 2015

“We lived our life feeling comfortable, in a way, with conflict. It was always there, so maybe we don’t know how it is to live without it,” says Paula Gaviria of the Colombia Victims’ Unit for Attention and Reparation. “Only people who have suffered conflict, like victims, are the ones that really know that peace needs to be made.” More →

December 12, 2014

For the young Jewish professionals he works with in Washington, DC, “social justice is their faith,” says Rabbi Scott Perlo of Sixth & I Historic Synagogue. “If someone needs help from me, I really have to give it, because they are worth, in God’s eyes, just the same as I am.” More →

November 14, 2014

“I love the Lutheran tradition, the Lutheran theology, the message of grace,” says Rev. Margaret Kelly, a Lutheran pastor in St. Paul, Minnesota. Her food-truck church offers meals, prayer services, and a feeling of community to the hungry and homeless. More →

October 17, 2014

“If we don’t in some concrete way help people to have a decent life here on earth, we are not fulfilling the gospel. It’s that simple,” say Pastor Dan Bryant, senior minister of the First Christian Church Disciples of Christ in Eugene, Oregon, and president of the board of Opportunity Village. More →

October 10, 2014

For decades now, the mission of this Nobel-Prize-winning humanitarian group has been “medical care and bearing witness.” But bearing witness has had to be tempered by real-life considerations, observes medical sociologist Renee Fox. “When they were young, they thought witnessing was an unmitigated virtue. As they matured they came to see how complex the ramifications of witnessing might be.” More →

October 3, 2014

Finding out for the families of the missing what happened to border crossers who disappeared is “the sacred baseline” for her work, says anthropologist Robin Reineke, cofounder of the Missing Migrant Project at the Colibri Center for Human Rights in Tucson, Arizona. “Care of the dead is such a key part of the Catholic faith.” More →

September 19, 2014

It was the campaign of one American woman, Jenny Bowen, in Berkeley, California, that brought loving care into the lives of millions of Chinese orphans, most of them girls. Bowen and her husband began by adopting one girl. Then another. Now Jenny Bowen leads Half the Sky, a foundation to deliver responsive care to all China’s orphans. “They’re being treated like their lives matter,” says Bowen. “They know it, and they know they’re loved, so they thrive.” More →

August 22, 2014