December 22, 2023
All through Advent, wonderful people just like you have been showing true love for our global family by buying World Gifts as Christmas presents. Whether you bought your nearest and dearest a Happy Queen Bee or Community Water Supply, your incredible support has inspired us to thank you – in song form!
Continue reading “The twelve days of World Gifts this Christmas”November 30, 2020
This Giving Tuesday, Becky Such our World Gifts Coordinator muses on the benefits of giving to others and how many of us have chosen to give differently this year.
Continue reading “Give back this Giving Tuesday”November 27, 2020
Jack works for CAFOD. He has occasionally received Christmas gifts he didn’t like – but not from you, he loved yours. Here he mulls on the simple switch he (and his relatives) can make, so that Christmas is happier for everyone.
November 17, 2020
Christine Allen, CAFOD’s Director, picks out some of her favourite World Gifts and explains why they’re a great way to give this Christmas.
Continue reading “Why I’m choosing World Gifts this Christmas”December 5, 2019
As we get swept up in all the manic preparations this festive season, it is important to remember the true meaning of Advent and Christmas. Sinead Callaghan, Young Leadership Coordinator at CAFOD, believes it is an opportunity to spread love and give to those in need. Continue reading “World Gifts: give the gift of love”
July 23, 2019
Therese in our Fundraising team has put together five ideas for how you can plan a wedding with less waste, with the added benefit of saving some money too.
Continue reading “A wedding without waste (and some other lovely tips)”June 3, 2019
Becky works on World Gifts at CAFOD. She tells us why she buys her Dad a World Gift for Father’s Day as well as celebrating the other father figures in her life.
Continue reading “Father’s Day gifts for the Dad it’s hard to buy for”
December 12, 2018
Rachel works for CAFOD. Here she reflects on how meeting Katy, a CAFOD Gapper, helped her to discover the power of a simple birth certificate, and inspired her to create a new, very special virtual gift for CAFOD’s World Gifts collection that will help babies and children around the world.
A birth certificate. Every person needs one, it shows our citizenship, lets us get a passport – it tells the world who we are. And I think that here in the UK, we take this simple legal document for granted.
But for people living in poverty, perhaps in rural areas, where babies are born at home, it is often forgotten. And a child without a birth certificate faces problems.
In Zimbabwe, children without a birth certificate cannot go to school, take exams, apply for an ID card, vote, travel, nor access many other basic essential services.
You can buy a Birth certificate World Gift so that a child can go to school
I’ve worked in fundraising for years and am always eager to hear about how donations help. Katy, who recently travelled to Zimbabwe on a gap year trip with CAFOD, told me about the terrible and long-lasting impact of growing up without a birth certificate.
Katy said, “Children around the world continue to grow up without the basic human right of an identity.”
This startling comment gripped me.
Continue reading “The power of a Birth certificate – a World Gifts update”
September 15, 2017
CAFOD legacy officer Hannah Caldwell shares the inspiring story of Lisl Steiner, who fled the Nazis, became a teacher and continues to change children’s lives by the gift she left to CAFOD in her will.
There are so many inspirational people at the heart of CAFOD’s work, each with their own story. I’m lucky that in my job every now and then I get to hear a little more of some of these stories.
One that I often think of is that of Lisl Steiner, who supported CAFOD for many years and remembered us with a gift in her will.
Lisl was born into a Jewish family in Vienna, 1923. At 15, as the world was on the brink of war and Jews were suffering cruelty and persecution at the hands of the Nazi regime, she made a lonely journey to England.
September 14, 2017
The legacy of Oscar Romero, former Archbishop of San Salvador who was assassinated in 1980, continues to inspire people around the world. CAFOD chair, Bishop John Arnold, has written about how Romero has inspired him, and how a gift in a will can enable us all to leave our own legacy of hope.
I decided some years ago to leave a gift to CAFOD in my will. As someone who has long appreciated CAFOD’s work and is very aware of our Christian duty to stand in solidarity with people who are poor, I felt it was the right thing to do.
Order or download CAFOD’s free will-writing guide
On my trip to El Salvador with CAFOD last year, I met many people deeply moved by the life of Blessed Oscar Romero and his determination to speak out against injustice. When visiting the radio station at the Jesuit university in San Salvador, I was reminded that nearly 40 years ago, CAFOD funded Romero’s own radio station after it was blown up by the military.
Continue reading “The power of hope – Oscar Romero’s legacy”
