Stories

The 2017 Atlantic hurricane season emerged as the most damaging in recent history with Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria causing destruction throughout Florida, Texas, the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico and other parts of the US and Caribbean. As we enter into the Season of Resilience we are reflecting on that period, long-term recovery and disaster preparedness. To start, read this story from Tina Beazer from the Virgin Islands as she looks back on Hurricane Maria. #SeasonofResilience

Episcopal Relief & Development Board Member Chiseche Salome Mibenge recently represented Episcopal Relief & Development at the Women Deliver 2019 Conference in Vancouver. She participated in a panel to discuss “Religion and Development for Gender Justice.” In this blog she shares her experience and highlights important takeaways.

How do we assess project impact? How do we use data to improve projects and share results?  These questions and more were tackled by an enthusiastic group of Episcopal Relief & Development partner staff – during their Community of Practice workshop and at ongoing bimonthly video conference meetings.

For Earth Day Learn about how farmers in Nicaragua are transforming their livelihoods. Episcopal Relief & Development and its partner organizations across the globe are working with vulnerable communities to build resilience to a rapidly changing climate. As we celebrate Earth Day, take a look at how Nicaraguan farmers are transforming their livelihoods while caring for creation. 

I think about that bit of wisdom every year as Holy Week rolls around. Good Friday, especially, carries the weighty-ness not only of loss, but of being lost. This is unfamiliar, unfriendly, hostile terrain. I want to rush forward to Easter – to that sense of home, of being found, to an orientation of resurrection, redemption, and new life.

I feel very strongly about foot washing. My feelings around foot washing are not particularly popular. There is around me a certain pressure to give people space, a feeling that I should not insist that people who show up to church on Maundy Thursday participate, that people should be made to feel invited and comfortable, that foot washing in the times of Jesus had a cultural meaning that western Christians cannot truly appreciate, etc., etc., and so we should just let it be. My gut reaction to all of these very hospitable solutions to the awkwardness of foot washing is to slyly roll my eyes and mutter under my breath, in a most fourteen year-old exaggerated tone, “What-ever.”