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Arsenic and excessive salt from rising sea levels poisoned Julia’s young family with every sip of water they took. The pond near the rural village where Julia, her husband and their two children live in Bangladesh is their primary source of water. But it was contaminated by the poisonous carcinogen arsenic and so high in salinity, the entire family was at risk of hypertension and high blood pressure. But Julia only had two choices: Either collect the pond water she knew was making her family sick or travel miles from her village to pump drinking water from a distant well, which caused incredible hardship. If she chose to go to the well, Julia had to carry heavy jars that were difficult to lift and caused her long-term physical pain. She also had to walk miles to and from the well, which could take all day, instead of caring for her...

This program supported a community in Burji, Southern Ethiopia. This region is remote and has limited resources. This program started by supporting a cooperative of 50 women and has now expanded to support 10 youth groups and 248 farming households, impacting a total of over 2,000 people with direct food access, crop and income diversity, and increased climate resilience in the face of severe drought.

“When I was a little girl, my father taught me to respect our ancestors,” Cristiane Flores, a young Gavião woman shared. Cristiane grew up in an Indigenous forest village near the banks of the Rio Negro, but she relocated several years ago to the metropolitan city of Manaus. “He also taught me to honor and see God in nature—in the trees, in water.” In Brazil, Episcopal Relief & Development partners with the Episcopal Diocese of the Amazon to deliver the Amazônia Resilience Initiative, a program serving marginalized, often remote communities in the states of Pará and Amazonas. Many of those served by the initiative are among Brazil’s 1.7 million Indigenous people. Cristiane and other participants receive monthly food debit cards or baskets containing rice, beans, cassava flour and other staples. Program teams also facilitate savings and loan groups that include financial literacy training. Members like Cristiane contribute monthly to a...