by Dionel Rodriguez | Aug 3, 2026
For small-scale farming families throughout the Kibwezi region of southeastern Kenya, a successful harvest often determines whether a household will have enough food and income for the year ahead. Recurring droughts, increasingly unpredictable rainfall, and the broader effects of climate change have made traditional crop varieties less reliable, leaving many families more vulnerable to crop failure than in previous generations.
To help communities adapt, Maryknoll provides drought-resistant seed varieties specifically selected for arid and semi-arid growing conditions. These improved varieties of maize, beans, and green grams mature more quickly, require significantly less rainfall, and produce higher yields than the traditional seeds many farmers have relied on for decades. Several of these varieties are also richer in essential nutrients such as iron and zinc, offering a secondary benefit in the fight against childhood malnutrition.
This project reflects the Catholic Social Teaching principle of Care for God’s Creation, working with the land in ways that build resilience rather than deplete it, alongside the Option for the Poor and Vulnerable, since smallholder farmers bear the earliest and heaviest costs of a changing climate. It also carries forward Maryknoll’s charism of practical, on-the-ground response to the needs of rural communities, meeting farmers where their livelihoods actually begin, in the soil itself.
Gifts to this project provide drought-resistant seed to farming families in Kibwezi, helping them increase harvests, improve nutrition, and build lasting resilience against the recurring droughts that have long threatened their livelihoods.
by Dionel Rodriguez | Aug 3, 2026
The semi-arid Kibwezi region of Kenya faces a compounding set of environmental pressures: recurring drought, poor harvests, and increasing land degradation that makes it progressively harder for farming families to sustain themselves. As topsoil erodes and water sources become less reliable, the challenges facing one growing season tend to carry over into the next, creating a difficult cycle for local communities to break.
To help address these interconnected challenges, Maryknoll supports a Care of Creation initiative that combines reforestation, renewable energy, and broader environmental stewardship. Drought-resistant trees such as Mukau and Moringa are being planted throughout local parish communities, improving soil fertility, increasing water retention, and reducing erosion, while also providing families with nutritional and economic benefits through their fruit, leaves, and timber.
Directly inspired by Pope Francis’s encyclical Laudato Si’, this project embodies the Catholic Social Teaching principle of Care for God’s Creation, treating environmental restoration and human wellbeing as a single, integrated concern rather than competing priorities. It reflects Maryknoll’s long-standing charism of care for creation as an expression of the Gospel itself, recognizing the land not merely as a resource but as a gift entrusted to humanity’s stewardship.
Gifts to this project support reforestation, clean energy, and environmental stewardship efforts that protect the land, strengthen food security, and improve daily life for farming families confronting the growing effects of climate change.
by Dionel Rodriguez | Aug 3, 2026
Southeastern Kenya is one of the country’s most drought-prone regions, where families depend heavily on rain-fed agriculture and livestock for their survival. As rainfall has grown increasingly unpredictable in recent years, communities around Kathyaka Parish face recurring cycles of failed harvests, water scarcity, and strained access to healthcare and education.
Rather than address these challenges one at a time, Maryknoll supports a coordinated set of parish development initiatives designed to build lasting resilience. Projects include clean water systems that reduce the hours families spend collecting water each day, agricultural improvements that help farmers adapt to changing conditions, renovations to local healthcare facilities, support for schools, and small income-generating initiatives that diversify family livelihoods beyond farming alone.
This coordinated effort embodies the Catholic Social Teaching themes of Solidarity and the Option for the Poor and Vulnerable, recognizing that lasting change requires addressing water, health, education, and livelihood together rather than in isolation. It also reflects Maryknoll’s founding charism of integral mission, understanding that proclaiming the Gospel and improving the material conditions of a community’s daily life are not separate tasks but a single, unified act of love.
Gifts to this project support practical, community-driven solutions, from wells to clinics to classrooms, that help families in Kathyaka Parish overcome recurring hardship, strengthen their day-to-day quality of life, and build a more secure and self-reliant future.
by Dionel Rodriguez | Aug 3, 2026
In Homabay County, along the shores of Lake Victoria in western Kenya, many families live in deep poverty, struggling to afford food, school fees, and basic necessities. Decades of high HIV/AIDS prevalence in the region have also left many households headed by widows, grandparents, or young people caring for younger siblings, often with little income and few paths toward economic stability.
Maryknoll is helping vulnerable families build sustainable livelihoods through small-scale pig farming. Participants receive piglets, feed, and basic supplies, along with training in animal husbandry and access to veterinary support that keeps their herds healthy. As the pigs mature and reproduce, families can sell offspring for income or expand their own herds, turning a modest start into an ongoing source of revenue rather than a one-time benefit.
This project reflects the Catholic Social Teaching principle of the Option for the Poor and Vulnerable, directing resources first to those with the least power to secure their own future, and the Dignity of Work, which holds that every person has a right to productive labor that provides for a family. It also carries forward the Maryknoll charism of living among the poor and equipping them, not merely relieving them, so that dignity and self-reliance grow together.
Gifts to this project provide piglets, feed, veterinary care, and hands-on training that help families move from a cycle of poverty toward lasting self-sufficiency, while strengthening the wider community around them.
by Dionel Rodriguez | Feb 22, 2023
Across Asia, many migrant workers face exploitation, unsafe working conditions, and violations of their basic human rights, often within complex global supply chains that make accountability difficult to trace and enforce. These abuses can range from illegally charged recruitment fees to unsafe labor conditions to outright human trafficking, and workers frequently have little power to address them individually.
Maryknoll works alongside laborers, community organizations, corporations, and government agencies to confront labor abuses, human trafficking, and environmental concerns embedded within global supply chains. Through advocacy, worker education, research into supply chain practices, and structured collaboration with multiple stakeholders, this ministry works to promote ethical business practices and greater respect for human dignity within international commerce.
This project embodies two interconnected Catholic Social Teaching principles, the Dignity of Work and Care for God’s Creation, recognizing that exploitative labor practices and environmental harm frequently share the same root causes within global supply chains. It reflects Maryknoll’s prophetic charism of confronting injustice at its structural source, working directly with corporations and governments rather than addressing only its downstream effects on individual workers.
Gifts to this project support advocacy, research, and worker education that advance justice, protect vulnerable migrant laborers, and promote responsible, ethical business practices across global supply chains.
by Dionel Rodriguez | Feb 22, 2023
Conflict and violence within Myanmar have forced millions of people from their homes, creating one of the world’s most significant and prolonged humanitarian crises. Many of those displaced have sought refuge near the Thai border, living in precarious conditions with limited access to consistent food, medicine, shelter, or safety.
Maryknoll partners with local organizations to provide emergency food, medicine, shelter, and broader humanitarian assistance to displaced families living in this border region. Because conditions along the border can shift quickly depending on the state of the conflict inside Myanmar, this ministry is structured to respond flexibly to evolving needs rather than following a fixed, predetermined program.
Responding flexibly to a shifting humanitarian crisis reflects the Catholic Social Teaching principle of Solidarity, a readiness to stand with displaced families regardless of how circumstances along the border may change from month to month. This ministry also embodies Maryknoll’s founding charism of presence at the peripheries, remaining engaged in a protracted crisis that has, for many observers, faded from regular public attention.
Gifts to this project support emergency food, medicine, and shelter for families displaced by conflict along the Myanmar-Thailand border, providing comfort and stability amid ongoing crisis and uncertainty, and bearing witness that these families have not been forgotten.
