This Wednesday is Ash Wednesday, the start of Lent. Each year during Lent, the Church in Australia supports the work of Caritas through donations to Project Compassion. Caritas Australia chief executive officer JACK DE GROOT reflects on the compassion behind that giving
THE devastation of the Victorian bushfires is utterly horrifying. Hundreds of people lost their lives, thousands of other lives have been irrevocably changed. Australia is in mourning and the recovery will take many years.
Insurance companies can put a figure on the lives lost, houses burnt and people affected by the bushfires but we cannot, and will never be able to, quantify the horror, the loss, the sadness and the emotional scars.
Nothing can lesson or diminish the significance of these bushfires in the history of Australia – this weekend will be remembered forever. The intensity of feelings – loss, pain and sadness – can never be measured.
Communities have been torn apart by the savagery of nature.
The Boxing Day tsunami in 2004 claimed the lives of about 300,000 people.
More than 120,000 people were killed in the province of Aceh alone. Last year when Cyclone Nargis struck landfall in Burma more than 80,000 people were killed and 2.5 million people were directly affected.
Every single day 27,000 children die from poverty-related causes, succumbing to pneumonia, diarrhoea, malaria, measles, HIV/AIDS, neonatal complications and other illnesses.
At least two-thirds of these deaths are entirely preventable.
Whilst in Australia we grieve our lost family members and friends and attempt to piece together so many fractured lives, we get an understanding of the personal impacts that the statistics can never convey.
As the ripples of each family member or friend that has been lost in the fires reverberate out across our community, so too do the impacts of poverty, so often reduced to inhuman numbers, regain their full meaning.
Just as those who lost their lives in the fires were daughters or sons, brothers or sisters, fathers or mothers, aunts, uncles, grandparents, friends and community members, so too were the people in Aceh, Burma and everywhere else where poverty claims lives every day.
The outpouring of generosity for those affected by the bushfires is so typical of Australians. When people are in desperate need we dig deep, regardless of our own economic concerns.
It is easy to forget those who we cannot see who are suffering so much. Yet we must never lose sight of the way in which, despite our own hardships, we can help others.
It is in our interests to create a just world for everyone.
Currently, with more than one billion people living on less than US$1 a day, extreme poverty is a harsh and devastating reality for far too many families and communities.
At Caritas Australia, we continue to respond to disasters that occur around the world and importantly we also implement long-term development projects in poor communities.
Caritas Australia’s Project Compassion, gives you and all Australians an opportunity to help us improve the lot of the poorest and most vulnerable communities. In this way they are then able to protect themselves against preventable loss and damage well into the future.
This year’s Project Compassion theme, “an environment to grow in” highlights how important it is to have positive and healthy surroundings in order to lead a better life.
In Uganda, Caritas Australia is supporting a Caritas Lugazi sustainable agriculture project which gives subsistence farmers the opportunity to manage their land sustainably and improve household food security.
Before joining the program Teopista found it difficult to feed her family, let alone pay the school fees for her children.
But she has learnt to make the most of her small plot of land and through organic farming, a cow and a goat from a loan system, water tanks and facilities to ensure better hygiene and sanitation, Teopista now produces enough from her farm to feed her family, pay the school fees and sell her excess produce.
When Teopista and other rural farmers saw improvements in their own lives, they chose to support vulnerable members of their community by creating Good Samaritan Clubs.
Farmers visit people who are elderly or those suffering from HIV/AIDS, and tend their farms or take them food.
This spirit of sharing with and caring for others, despite the difficulties we may face ourselves, is a powerful one that encapsulates the very essence of the work of Caritas and our annual Lenten appeal, Project Compassion.
We thank you for your compassion for the most vulnerable in our world. In many ways, this is the true expression of our humanity.
