Caritas Bangladesh slashes programs due to global economic crisis

(January 4, 2010) Caritas Bangladesh slashed program funding in 2009 due to the fall-out of the global financial crisis, with the country's poorest being hit the hardest, the Catholic Church's social action arm says. School grants, maternity programs and livelihood schemes were all cut back due to a squeeze on funds. Benedict Alo D'Rozario, executive director of Caritas Bangladesh, told UCA News the crisis ultimately affected children, women and day labourers. There were even cases where they had to cut salaries of their community school teachers because of budget shortages. D'Rozario said school grants to the country's poorest children had been cut by 20 percent and training for midwives in the Safe Motherhood Project curtailed. Among Caritas’ programme affected were the Natural Resources Management Project, which helps poor people start small fishery projects, services to HIV/AIDS patients and elderly people, as well as disaster risk reduction projects. Eight out of 60 Caritas projects of the organization had budget cuts of 10-20 percent. Two new projects were also shelved for lack of funds. Despite the cutbacks, the agency still managed to start seven new projects, helping to save the jobs of its 5,000 full time staff. Caritas has 164 member organizations throughout the world.