I just got out of my first EARO (East Africa Regional Office) all-staff meeting. The meeting only lasted an hour, but I feel like I learned so much about process, management, and my colleagues. Most importantly, I now understand that the people I work with are passionate and impressive.

Just a quick example: there is one EARO staff member who is in charge of security and procurement. For over a year, he tracked food aid shipments going from Mombasa, on the coast of Kenya, into South Sudan. He found that CRS's shipping partner was not functioning as efficiently as possible, and this information helped him improve the process of getting food to hungry people AND caused the shipping partner to significantly lower its rate, saving CRS almost $1 million per year. Because USAID is the donor on the South Sudan food project, this incredible man actually just saved the American government $1 million. He's better at cutting costs than most of those folks in Congress! And his is only one of many stories I heard today about people doing amazing things to make aid work more effective, more efficient, and more service-oriented.

CRS is striking the balance between well-respected best practices and innovative tools to really change humanitarianism across the world. The project I'm working on, the CIRCA project, is just one example of that balance.

CIRCA stands for Capacity-building for Inter-Religious Community Action. The underlying assumptions that support this project are a) that community members hold the best solutions to their problems and b) that increasing human capacity is a long-term preventer of conflict and humanitarian emergency. I really believe in both of those ideas, which is why I'm so excited to be a part of this project.

What am I actually doing, you ask? Well, right now I'm editing. The CIRCA Program Manager has written three units of a five-unit curriculum, and once I finish editing them they will be ready for publishing. After that, the PM and I will work together to write the last two units. This curriculum will be used by facilitators to train local NGO partners in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Egypt, Niger, and Nigeria about inter-religious communication and cooperation. Local community leaders bring vital knowledge of their context to CRS, and hopefully the CIRCA curriculum will give them the tools they need to sew seeds of religious peace in their communities. If (when!) CIRCA is successful in the long term, these communities will be less vulnerable to religious violence and extremism because they've worked together in this training and its connector projects.

Like I said before, I am honored to be a part of this project. Its assumptions are well-supported by academic and professional expertise, and its goals resonate with my passions and values. Plus, the actual work I'm doing (writing and editing) makes use of some of my best skills. What more could a girl ask for?!