By Deacon Jim Butts
Diocesan Director, CCHD
Pope John Paul II Parish, Bigfork

Money for the nation’s largest private anti-poverty program is collected in pews across the Helena Diocese and throughout the nation each November. Our bishops redistribute it nationally through Catholic Campaign for Human Development grants to groups of low-income people bent on changing their poverty by changing things that keep them poor. Each year, a greater amount of that money comes back to western Montana than is collected here.

Nov. 1 is the deadline for local groups to apply for grants from CCHD. Perhaps you know of a group looking for an idea that will help them change their poverty to self-sufficiency. Let’s look at some of the marvelous things done with your donations both nationally and here in our diocese.

In Philadelphia, Pa., Home Care Associates is a business started by and made up of under-employed women. Some have been on public assistance. They received training in patient skills and then went to work providing home care for the disabled and elderly. Some of these women have gone on to get a GED and then on to college.

Garment workers in Los Angeles were abused in about every way imaginable, from sexual abuse to unpaid wages. They requested a CCHD grant of $20,000 to help them organize. The Church gave them $30,000 and within three years their accomplishments were staggering. They hired legal assistance and recovered $1.4 million in owed wages. They have much safer working conditions and have allied with brand name clothing companies who put pressure on the factory owners to improve working conditions.

Farmers in Wisconsin watched a couple of neighbors lose their family farms and drop into poverty. They reacted by starting a co-op, received support from CCHD, and were able to open a creamery where they now market their own milk, cheese and other dairy products – providing employment and good wages where there were none in sight.

Springfield, Mass., tenants took ownership of abandoned homes and apartment complexes, repaired them and became homeowners where they changed a drug neighborhood into a safe place for families to flourish. At the same time, these people learned marketable skills. Many were able to enter into the workforce with newfound skills in demand in the building industry.

Predatory lenders stalked the south side of Chicago. Payday loan facilities took advantage of people living on the edge by charging 25 to 30 percent for cashing their pay checks. Loans cost them 300 or even 500 percent annual interest. With a CCHD grant, people were empowered to start their own South Chicago community-owned savings and loan credit union where check cashing, low interest loans and savings accounts supplanted the loan sharks. Struggling families were amazed at their own ability to save money when the predators were no longer in charge.

And the money that comes out here – in the Diocese of Helena – is doing work that would not be possible otherwise.

The North Missoula Community Development Council is in the forefront of land trust housing. That means the organization owns the land and homeowners own just that – their homes. With help from CCHD grants, it means that low-income people can become homeowners and build equity on the value of the structure. At the same time, the organization grows because the land beneath the structure continues to be owned by the entire group of low-income land trust members. NMCDC recently completed 17 land trust low-income housing units in Missoula.

Organizers from Montana Peoples Action/Indian Peoples Action help people obtain access to health care and educational programs. They conduct voter registration drives both on native reservations across Montana as well as in the urban core of cities like Missoula, Butte and Billings.

It is a very fine thing to give needy people a hand-out. It is a great thing to give a hand-up – helping needy people help themselves up and out of poverty. With your donations, for nearly 40 years, CCHD has done that.

If you know of a group of primarily low-income citizens hoping to bring self-determination to their economic plight, they may qualify for a CCHD grant. Please have them get in touch with me: Deacon Jim Butts, Pope John Paul II Parish, P.O. Box 277, Bigfork MT 59911, or phone 406-837-4846. Goals, criteria and guidelines may be seen at www.usccb.org/cchd/grants/process.shtml.

The deadline for the eligibility quiz is Nov. 1.

The call for donations will come from the altar in your parish mid-November. You’ll find envelopes at your parish that can be returned in the regular collection baskets. Please be generous and just watch how your gift grows into dignity, pride and self-sufficiency for our low-income friends and neighbors.

Justice Voices articles are coordinated by the Catholic Campaign for Human Development committee of the Diocese of Helena.


Published in The Montana Catholic, Vol. 24, No. 10, October 17, 2008.