Charity begins at home. But as Christians, we are called to reach beyond our individual households and neighborhoods, and to live in spiritual solidarity with our brothers and sisters in our larger community and throughout the world. And as Catholics, we are given unique opportunities to make these broader connections through Catholic Relief Services (CRS), the official global outreach ministry of the U.S. Catholic Church.

We encourage you to check this page and the parish bulletin regularly for these opportunities to be the compassionate face of Christ to the world.

Please feel free to contact us with any questions or suggestions: 

Charlie and Dianne Gardner
Global Solidarity Ambassadors for Nativity Parish
gardner1947@gmail.com
317-407-9130

Join us in the parish center after the Masses on Pentecost, May 19 and 20.
 
Personalize a letter to Congress in our annual
Bread for the World Offering of Letters for the Hungry. (more information below)
 
Support Third World farmers by purchasing some
Fair Trade coffee, cocoa, olive oil, or chocolate.
 
Cookies and Fair Trade coffee will be served.

Please plan to bring cash or check for this opportunity. This sale is not a fundraiser. It is simply an opportunity to demonstrate our solidarity with the poor and celebrate the human dignity of the farmers who grow the products.

Catholic social teaching is filled with guidance on how we can help to transform the world through acts of economic justice. We are all consumers, and when we purchase items such as coffee, cocoa, olive oil, and chocolate through Fair Grade, we are supporting the farmers and producers of the products so that they may earn a fair living, plan for the future, and invest in their own growth.

Catholic Relief Services partners with companies that have made a full commitment to Fair Trade principles.
 

This year, we need to ask Congress to invest in and protect key programs that help improve the lives of men, women, and children facing hunger and poverty in the U.S. and around the world. These include tax credits for low-income workers, international development assistance, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). 

Thanks in part to the letters we wrote last year, Congress recently passed a fiscal year 2018 budget that largely maintained funding levels for both domestic and international anti-hunger programs and even increased a few of them. These results are encouraging, but this year we are again faced with a 2019 budget that proposes drastic cuts to programs that help people struggling with hunger and poverty both domestically and abroad. And so our letters are needed more than ever. Check out the brief video on the left about SNAP.

We ask you to take a few minutes to personalize a brief letter to your senator or representative. Your handwritten support will carry even more weight than an email or a phone call.

On the following weekend, our letters will be blessed during Mass. Then they will be combined with those from many other churches and personally delivered to the local congressional offices.

Together, we can make a difference in helping to end hunger!

More information is at www.bread.org/ol.