How does a family regain its footing after it loses everything? As flood waters recede, that is a question being asked millions of times over as Pakistanis begin the painful steps of reclaiming their lives following a month of grim disruption, loss and trauma.

One of the families who received a food package from CWS lives in the northern district of Shangla. The challenges facing Said Qamar, his wife Pareena Bibi, and their large family are considerable, as they and other family members recounted recently. Read more.

At this week’s World Water Week Symposium, in Stockholm, global water experts are reporting that clean water and good sanitation is a socially profitable and economically smart investment.

Kenyan Mary Obiero, coordinator for the CWS East Africa Water for All/Water for Life programs, notes that "we heard experts from a variety of sectors and regions present data showing that for every U.S. dollar invested in good sanitation, the returns can be from seven to nine dollars."  Read more.

With its steep valleys and isolated villages, the northern Pakistani district of Kohistan is a hardscrabble place where people coping with Pakistan’s recent floods are also worried about the coming winter. Their concerns are based on pre-existing problems in Kohistan: Malnutrition, tuberculosis and eye and skin infections were already common here prior to the worst natural disaster in Pakistan’s history.

CWS is providing medical care in Kohistan and surrounding districts via its mobile health units and is also distributing food packages to flood-affected families.

“This is the only health care we receive,” said Mohammad Khalid, in the flood-affected village of Mohandari. Read more.

Arnold Alcimé stood on his two-acre plot of land and shook his head in frustration. Life as a farmer has never been more difficult than it is now, said the octogenarian, recalling earlier times when credit and new equipment were easier to get and when the land itself seemed to suffer less. Though this seemingly lush farmland often called Haiti's "rice bowl" looks fertile, recent years have taken a severe toll. Hurricanes in 2008 destroyed three-quarters of Haiti's agricultural land, according to the World Food Program – a situation worsened by Haiti's deforested and denuded hillsides, which made farmland in valleys like the one in which Alcimé lives and works all the more vulnerable. Read more.