Catholic Relief Services presented an exciting new initiative at the recent Catholic New Media Conference in Arlington, Texas announcing their new website–FAITHWORKS. FaithWorks offers many forms of media including video, photos, and stories reporting on the worldwide efforts of CRS. CRS is allowing Catholic bloggers and webmasters to take their great media FREE to use and share with others.
FaithWorks reveals and revels in the faithfulness and good work of Catholics everywhere. FaithWorks wants to help tell the global Catholic story – that includes your story.
Faithworks encourages you to post comments and questions and spark conversation. Catholic Relief Services was founded in 1943 by the Catholic Bishops of the United States to serve World War II survivors in Europe. Since then, they have expanded in size to reach more than 100 million people in more than 100 countries on five continents.
From CRS: What is the Global Catholic Story? The global Catholic story is faith in action at home and around the world. It is Gospel love — sometimes at its most serene and sometimes its most gritty. It’s a story you help tell through your work. At CRS, we’re blessed to see Catholic faith in action every day. Everywhere the Church sends us to work, we collect stories, images and video. We’ve used these resources to help tell the CRS and Catholic stories. Now, a broad and vibrant Catholic conversation has emerged on the Web. Catholics are embracing New Evangelism even as they learn the power of Internet communications. At CRS, we’d like to open our media resources to the Catholic online community, to help them tell and illustrate the Church’s global story and their own stories.
CRS has a worldwide network of professional and amateur photographers, videographers, and reporters that often can offer stories and images before the Associated Press can get to the scene. They are also able to share contributions from other Catholic sources such as a entertaining video from Fr. James Martin’s talk at Villanova University. This is truly a great and needed service that CRS is offering to the Catholic Online community, and a blessing to our Catholic Faith. CRS also has their own YouTube Channel, as well as using Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, and RSS. Kudos to Catholic Relief Services for being on the cutting-edge in technology and offering good communication to spread the news of the “Faith Works” of the Global Catholic Church. Check out more with the links below, and your comments are welcome.
Following are samples of some of the media offered:
Photos from world locations:
Robin is a farmer in Madagascar living in a dry part of the country. But thanks to Catholic Relief Services (CRS), the farms in his community are thriving. Before CRS came to his village, farmers spent many hours carrying water buckets to their crops. When CRS gave the farmers a new pump, their productivity changed dramatically, so did their lives. Now they water three times as much land in half the time it took with a bucket. Today, Mr. Robin grows corn, lettuce, sorghum, cucumbers, pumpkins, and orange trees. Photo by Sara Fajardo/CRS
Thirteen year old Gulsana has a big heart. When the community health worker from Catholic Relief Services told her family her little sister needed to eat more food to gain a healthy weight, she became the family’s advocate for health. Gulsana convinced her father that the dried powder nutritional supplement provided by the government was good food for the toddler by making a sweet pudding and letting her father taste it first. Gulsana is happy to see two-year-old Shabnam looking healthier and moving around and playing more. Photo by Laura Sheahen/CRS
Photos of Simple Meals for Operation Rice Bowl: Ifisashi from Zambia- Photo by Philip Laubner/CRS
Hot rice casserole served in a thick, buttery peanut sauce. Collard greens and tomatoes add a garden-fresh flavor to this creamy dish. Catholic Relief Services’ microfinance programs in Zambia help people earn more money to support their families and save for the future.
Videos:
LINKS
FaithWorks–Guidelines for participation
Catholic Relief Services Website
CRS Photos (photos.crs.org)
CRS Newsroom (crs.org/newsroom/)
CRS Newswire (newswire.crs.org)
CRS Topic Experts (http://www.crs.org/newsroom/expert-biographies)
