It is with this cry of the heart that a major donor (who prefers to remain anonymous) closed the meeting that we had with her last Friday (May 4^th), to thank her for an important gift she made for a project involving youth in the Palestinian Territories.

I was there with one of my colleagues from International Programs, Sonia Lebesgue, Program Officer for the Middle East, and Monica Lambton, a very active member of Development and Peace, who lived in Jerusalem for a few years.

For a week during Lent I had the great privilege of accompanying Father Edwin Gariguez through a solidarity visit of the Atlantic Provinces. Father Edu is executive director of NASSA, the social action arm of the Philippines Catholic church and one of Development and Peace’s most enduring partners.

Development and Peace partner NGO Forum in Cambodia is working to defend the land rights of Indigenous communities in the country. They recently released a report entitled "Free, Prior and Informed Consent in Development" that shows how communities are not being consulted when land deals are being made between the government and private companies.

I recently had the privilege, along with some of my other colleagues, to pass an hour in the company of the Venerable Sovath, a Cambodian monk who is making himself heard by the authorities in his country. In fact, because he has dared to even ask the most simple of questions – Why can’t I be here?

Wastage of public resources should never be allowed to continue, says the Jesuit Center for Theological Reflection (JCTR) to the new elected government in Zambia in a press statement issued last week. “In a poor country like Zambia where poverty levels are as high as 63% and the incidence of rural poverty as high as 78%,” says Sydney Mwansa, Programme Officer in the Economic Equity and Development Programme of the Jesuit Centre for Theological Reflection (JCTR), “every ngwee counts and should therefore be collected and spent for the intended purpose and beneficiaries.”