Stories

At 66 years of age, Ursula is transforming her community and providing everything her seven grandchildren need. She’s a farmer, leader, mother, and changemaker—all it took was a little training to ignite her passion.

By applying sustainable, climate-smart techniques like push-pull pest management, Betty increased her harvests, fed her children, and boosted family income.

By including women like Seng in opportunities to grow their knowledge, realize their goals, and raise their children, FH Cambodia is empowering them to help lift their communities out of poverty.

This year, the world approaches Lent—the six week season between Ash Wednesday and Easter Sunday—with a heightened sense of sorrow and fear. Our world is on fire—again. Instead of COVID-19, it’s war, inflation, mass hunger, unemployment, and political instability. If ever we needed to turn our eyes to Jesus and prepare our hearts to celebrate and affirm his resurrection power, it’s now! If ever we needed to long for his return, it’s today.

It’s no surprise that Mandela and his peers felt like second-class citizens in their homeland. As members of the Indigenous Batwa Peoples in Burundi, they had faced discrimination from before they were even born.

When Deborah was just 12 years old, she was kidnapped and held captive with a group of young girls for two months. By the time she escaped and returned home, the damage was done. Her harrowing ordeal haunted her into her teens and adulthood. Fearing social stigma, she told no one the truth about what had happened, except for her mother and sister. She had been a victim of human trafficking, but she didn’t feel like a survivor. She felt restless, fearful, and depressed. She isolated herself from friends and community. She couldn’t work—she could barely brush her own hair.

Does child sponsorship really work?

We’ve Read The Stats:

One of our favourite things about Easter Sunday is the table feast.

Have you ever heard of the neem tree?

And just like that, they’re off.

Did you know that more than 800 million people in the world don’t get enough to eat each day? That’s a shocking number. What’s even more shocking is that the world actually produces enough food to nourish each and every one of those children, women, and men.

When selling home-grown vegetables is your bread and butter, it’s no small thing to run out of the fertilizer that makes them grow big and juicy. Or for a pest to devour your spinach and cabbage crops. Or to have hang-ups getting freshly cut produce to market on time.

We realize that charity gift catalogues can be confusing—you’re buying a gift but you don’t receive a gift, but someone in North America gets the gift...but not really—they get a card, not a gift... Sooo, who gets your goat?

In that moment I realized “the poor” can outdo us “wealthy ones” any day of the week when it comes to sacrificially sharing food. While they lack material resources, they are profoundly rich in hospitality.

Have you ever tried to change your family’s diet? Convince your children to eat new foods like cauliflower rice or chopped spinach in their tomato sauce? It can be a hard sell. Many of us struggle with change. Perhaps you’ve had to learn a new and seemingly impossible computer program for work, adapt to driving a manual car, or cut monthly expenses in order to save for that replacement phone you really need? It takes courage to change a habit or routine,try new technologies, or embrace different beliefs.

This International Development Week we’ve selected books with some radical ideas to expand our perspectives and hopefully start some passionate conversations. Find out why business matters to God, how faith connects to food, and how "the poorest people in the world...thrive lavishly." These books will challenge your assumptions and provoke thoughtful questions about life, economics, and the “American Dream.”

How some kids are fundraising to end poverty - they're never too young to make a difference!