She’s grown up with the soft mud of the paddy between her toes. Growing rice, it’s safe to say, is in her blood. She remembers sitting in the fields as her grandmother worked, banging pots and shouting away the birds that treated the fields as a buffet table.

But this planting season it wasn’t the birds; it was fish. Amie’s field is on the shores of the Gambia River where tides of fresh water lap in twice a day to irrigate her rice. But that fresh water also brings Amie’s nemesis: tilapia. The big-lipped fish came en masse and chewed her rice seedlings down to a nub. “I thought I wouldn’t have anything this year,” she says. “I thought I would suffer.”

Amie knew if she didn’t get help she wouldn’t have enough rice to feed the eight people who live in her compound. Or enough to sell for extra money. She would have to resort to digging the roots of a wild plant and selling it in the market as a kind of natural potpourri. But that wouldn’t be enough to cover the cost of a bag of rice. The Gambia imports some 78 percent of its rice, and Amie knew she’d have to pay. At the time, a 100-pound bag cost $47. That was up from $29 in January 2008. Amie knew she was in trouble.

But Catholic Relief Services, through the Association for Village Support, a local nongovernmental organization based in the area, gave Amie—along with 1,500 other families—a $20 voucher to buy fertilizer, something she had never used on her rice. She said she thought that river water was enough. And, besides, the fertilizer, she figured, would just wash away. But with a field full of gnawed rice stalks, Amie was desperate; the fertilizer couldn’t have come at a better time.

With 50 pounds of fertilizer and advice on how to apply it, Amie’s rice not only grew back, but she thinks she’s going to have her best harvest ever: 35 bags, minimum, she says, standing amid the golden piles of rice drying next to her field. That will top her best year of 30 bags. She’s going to have plenty to feed her children, buy clothes for them, and pay their school fees. She’ll even have enough to sell so she can invest in a $30 bag of fertilizer for next year.

“Now I have seen the benefit,” she says, as she threshes the golden rice kernels in the hot Gambian sun. “It’s worth selling the rice to buy fertilizer. Before, I never thought of it.”

CRS also gave a new, fast-maturing seed to 280 “seed multipliers,” women who grew the high-quality seeds for the next planting season. Along with the seed, CRS gave each a $40 voucher to buy fertilizer. The seed multipliers should grow more than 22 tons of seeds to ensure enough will be on the market for next year.

Immediate Help, Immediate Results

When the price of rice spiked last year, CRS was one of the first to respond. It was an opportunity for farmers to take advantage of higher prices and raise production. Just like in The Gambia, CRS gave female rice farmers in Burkina Faso fertilizer and seeds. The agency’s quick reaction meant that the farmers’ current crop would have a higher yield and they wouldn’t have to wait until this year for assistance.

The need to increase rice production in Africa—and decrease reliance on imported Asian rice—is so acute that CRS, along with the Africa Rice Center and other partners, has set up a two-year program in Senegal, Mali, Ghana and Nigeria to help increase the rice production of 10,000 farmers in each country. The goal: Boost domestic rice production in the four countries by 30,000 tons. This will be done by providing improved seed, fertilizer and technical assistance.

“Rice is perhaps the most important cultural and cash crop for small farmers across West Africa,” says Tom Remington, CRS’ agriculture advisor for Africa. “CRS-supported programs—in partnership with the Africa Rice Center and others—will ensure that West African rice farmers become and remain competitive in rice.”

A Second Planting

A few villages down the road from Amie, you’ll find Ndey Jallow, a smiling woman whose knock-off chandelier earrings would make Liz Taylor proud. But she wasn’t so happy a few months ago. River hippos submarined into her village’s rice paddies under the cover of darkness, wallowing and lolling through their manicured fields. There was nothing Ndey could do. As big as propane tanks, and with nasty attitudes, hippos are known to “staple” those who enter their territory. Hippos are strictly vegetarians but will use their two protruding canines to clamp down and bite people when they feel threatened. It’s illegal to shoot them in The Gambia, so Ndey could only shake her head, suck her teeth, and hope the damage was minimal.

But this year, she will be able to make up for what the hippos destroyed. CRS gave her ATM-3, a new variety of rice that Taiwanese researchers in The Gambia developed. It grows to maturity in three months. The rice that she usually grows (barrah mano, or “labor rice,” is what they call it) takes four to five months to mature. By the time it matures, the fresh water in the Gambia River that irrigates her crops will turn salty because of a lack of rain. The salty water kills the rice plants.

The new variety, which is sprouting in floating green carpets as thick and trim as a barbershop crew cut, will be ready before the salty water arrives. Ndey was so impressed with its fast growth that she took it upon herself to plant the second crop. Nobody from CRS told her to. She thinks she’ll be able to harvest a second crop of rice before the salty water arrives.

Last year, Ndey harvested eight bags of rice. But it didn’t grow to maturity. When she milled it to remove the husks, the rice grains disintegrated into powder. With the new variety, the rice is rock hard and white as baby’s teeth. So far, she’s harvested 12 bags. And there’s more to come in a few months. That’s going to help her pay for cooking oil, meat and soap: three of her biggest expenses.

What’s the difference in taste between traditional rice and ATM-3? “It’s the difference between sugar and honey,” says a smiling rice farmer named Sokhna Jow. “The taste of the rice made us cultivate it.”

“Is this Fanta or beer?” she asked the young man who’d bought it for her.

Grace was parched. The sun was out in full force in Goma, a town in eastern Congo. If he was buying, she was drinking. She wasn’t concerned that she’d just met him. Although she didn’t know him, he went to the same school as she did and they had walked to class together that day.

Grace’s head started to swim. She couldn’t sit up straight. Then everything went black.

When she woke up, she was on the floor in a strange bedroom. The man who bought her the Fanta was with her. She tried to stand up but couldn’t.

“What did you give me?” she asked. “I don’t feel normal.”

“No. Just go back to sleep,” he said. “You’re just tired.”

She slowly regained consciousness and looked down.

At that moment, Grace knew she’d been raped.

A Disturbing New Trend

In back alleys and along main streets of Goma, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, this scene is becoming disturbingly common. Rape has been a war tactic in recent years here, a way for armed groups to tear apart communities, destroy villages and flush families from their land.

Another reason for rape, say experts, is that soldiers are based far from their wives for months or years. Their salaries are small and often late, which raises frustrations and the incidents of looting and rape. But rape counselors here say that while this continues among armed groups, they are seeing a disturbing new trend: a spike in civilians raping women. Men are now raping teenagers whom they have grown up with, who live in their neighborhoods.

Anastasie Balingene, a rape counselor who works for Catholic Relief Services’ partner Caritas Goma, is one of the first people these young women tell their stories to. With her big round glasses and calm motherly voice, girls open up to her; they hide nothing. They often confide in her before their own mothers.

Anastasie is an expert listener. Maybe it’s those kind eyes or that disarming smile. Whatever it is, the girls trust her, and before long, between the spluttering Kiswahili and racking sobs, the teenagers reveal the grisly details of what grown men did to them.

Fear, Trauma and Shame

Nobody knows exactly how many rapes are committed in Congo’s North and South Kivu provinces. Many women never report what happens to them. The shame and ostracism that follows is too much to handle. They know that if word gets out that they were raped, the prospects of marriage go down dramatically.

Recent statistics provided by Caritas shine a light on the problem. Between January 2009 and the end of April, 749 women were treated for rape at hospitals supported by Caritas, an increase from years past.

• Of the women who reported to hospitals after being raped, 61 percent came from camps for people displaced by violence.
• Most of the women (87 percent) were raped during the day. The rest were raped at night.
• Eighty percent of women reported the rape to the hospital at least a month after it happened.

These statistics reveal a shift in how rapes occur. More rapes now seem to happen during the day. Camps are now a target. And the high numbers of women reporting late to the hospitals confirm that most women are still too traumatized immediately following the act to seek help.

Anastasie says the fear of being raped weighs on women who haven’t gone through it. She won’t let her own girls go out to fetch water early in the morning when women start lining up at the outdoor taps. And she definitely doesn’t let them out at night.

The problem, she says, is impunity. The court system in eastern Congo is unreliable. Files mysteriously go missing and cases can’t be prosecuted. She’s heard of authorities being bought off for $1,500 but says amounts vary. She and Caritas mediators who work with families and help identify rapists to police say that they have been targeted by rapists who return to the communities after being released from prison. While nobody has ever physically threatened her, Anastasie says word has spread in the community where she lives that she is involved in helping women. This has her nervous.

To prosecute a rapist here, a woman needs a medical certificate proving that a rape occurred, which requires an examination within two days. But many wait weeks or months. By that time, doctors say, it’s often difficult to find evidence that the rape occurred. Complicating matters, in North Kivu, a province of 800,000 people, there are only three practicing gynecologists.

Hope for the Future

Just outside Anastasie’s window sit eight teenagers, ranging from 14 to 19 years old. All have been raped, some by men in their own neighborhoods. One has braided bangs with beads the color of Skittles. A flower blooms out of the braids of another. With their delicate features and beaded bracelets, these teens look like Girl Scouts, not rape victims

It’s a little quieter today, because Maggie isn’t there. She usually causes a ruckus, and it falls to Grace to calm her down.

Maggie is Grace’s 1-year-old daughter. After she was born, Grace didn’t even want to look at her. She neglected her, didn’t wash her as often as she should have. She didn’t hug her like a newborn. This was a child of rape, and she wanted nothing to do with her.

But then Anastasie stepped in. She told her that the child is innocent, that Grace should love her. It took some convincing, and it didn’t happen overnight. But eventually Grace warmed up to Maggie.

This is just one anecdote. Anastasie has a little red notebook full of them: There are names and dates and neighborhoods and descriptions of how girls’ insides were damaged. As she runs down a list of cases—each one more horrific than the last—the group of teenage girls outside are sewing school uniforms.

They will talk about what happened, says Anastasie, but it won’t be easy for them. The tears will start and then they’ll clam up. They don’t want to have to relive it. They’re just coming around to thinking about boyfriends and, maybe eventually, marriage.

Something to Dream About

Outside, hand-cranked Singer sewing machines thrum as hems are stitched. Véronique Hahambu, a jolly seamstress with a tape measure around her neck, leads the group. Her three-month course teaches the teens sewing skills. When they finish, Caritas will help them set up their own businesses. While the skills they learn here are important, so is the camaraderie. The whispered jokes between backstitches are another part of the healing process.

They don’t talk about what happened to them, but they won’t forget it either. It’s starting to recede, thanks to Anastasie and the sewing classes. They finally have something to concentrate on, something to dream about.

One of the students, threading material under a hammering needle, says she’d like to open a boutique someday and sell wedding gowns.

One day, the women of Goma may flock to her for her hand-stitched dresses.

Those elegant dresses might even become the talk of the town.

And one day, this shy girl with brown eyes might just wear her own sequined creation when she walks down the aisle.

Names of raped women have been changed to protect their identities.

From San Diego to Baton Rouge, the vittles are scrumptious, says Thomas Awiapo, who works for Catholic Relief Services in Ghana but often travels to the United States teaching Catholics about Africa. But he prefers to be here in Wiaga: flat on his back in his undershirt, on four logs buffed to a shine by a thousand backsides, staring up into the arms of the knotty neem tree.

This is home, the place he grew up. Where women glide by with basins balanced on their heads and dusty kids loll in the dirt. Thomas can lie here for hours, the hot breeze rolling over him. Guinea fowl cluck nearby. Then silence, and the hiss and whiffle of the wind in the trees.

When he’s talking to crowds in the United States about the hunger in Ghana, this is the place he brings them back to. It’s also where the nightmare started.

Here’s the kitchen where the food was cooked that he fought over with his step-siblings. Often, it was the only meal of the day.

Over there are the fields where he hoed millet to earn extra money.

That’s the schoolyard where he’d trade salt and spices for extra food, knowing the students needed to put something on the bland boiled sorghum they were served for lunch.

“Most of my earliest memories are not good things,” he says. “What sticks so clearly in my mind is all about the treatment that I got.”

Painful Memories

He remembers the day his father died, how he ran to find his mother at the grinding mill. By the time he got back, his dad was gone. Soon his mother fell sick, and a medicine man arrived at the house. He went searching for the soul of his mother, following his family’s tradition that it had been taken away to the bush. Goats were killed as sacrifices. But she didn’t get better. Soon, they took Thomas away.

“I still remember standing at a different house, seeing them bury my mother,” he says. “At that point, I didn’t cry. I just felt something was missing. I shed tears later.”

Not long after this, the insults started. Certain members of his extended family whom he lived with said he was worthless, that he’d amount to nothing. What would he grow up to do for them? Nothing.

He remembers how hard they caned him when he broke the clay pots playing hide-and-seek. He remembers how their children were favored over him. “As a child, I don’t know why you didn’t give me food. I didn’t care. All I know is that I’m hungry.”

He doesn’t want to talk about that. It’s over with. It’s in the past.

His childhood story unfolds like thousands across Africa: He and his brothers were orphans and shunned by some family members. After his parents died, one of his younger brothers passed away. He doesn’t remember how, but guesses it had to do with malnutrition. Then his youngest brother died — the one he carried around on his back and cared for because nobody else would. His older brother soon ran away. To this day, Thomas doesn’t know where he is.

After his brother fled, Thomas was alone, living with a family who didn’t really love him.

For a time, he bounced between relatives. He quickly learned how to fend for himself. Sometimes that meant fighting other kids. But he was equally adept at charming his way into a seat at the evening meal of a neighbor or a distant relative. An aunt who lived in an outlying town would treat him as if he were her own son. And his uncle, who lived two miles away, would give him peanuts and millet flour (he didn’t dare ask for anything at home). At this uncle’s, he could eat as much as he liked. He became an expert at wolfing down large quantities of food because he was never sure when he would eat again.

A Taste for Learning

One day he saw kids passing by his house with containers of sorghum; he knew he had to find the source. He traced it back to the local school. He started going daily for the sorghum and powdered milk, but soon he acquired a taste for learning. That bland and boiled sorghum changed the trajectory of his life. The food kept him in school. He excelled.

His childhood finally caught up with him when he got to Notre Dame High School. When he heard his classmates talk about their parents, the memories that he had buried for so long resurfaced. “When I was in high school and I’d hear people say, ‘My mother has done this. My father has come to see me.’ I couldn’t use those words because I’ve never had them. Constantly, I cried.”

The priests from St. Francis Xavier parish could sense that Thomas was special. He would paint the inside of the church and cut the brambles around it. He became an expert at washing and ironing cassocks. They paid him for this. They also gave him shoes and t-shirts. They became father figures for Thomas, and soon he came to believe what he heard at church about men named Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, and turned away from the traditional beliefs that he grew up with.

After he graduated from high school, and against his family’s wishes, Thomas enrolled in the seminary.

“I went there as a way of thanking God,” he says.

He formed deep friendships with the other priests. He loved the preaching and the parishioners. During the homily, Thomas regaled the congregation with that soaring voice and his electric personality. “Fellow Christians, fellow lovers of Our Lord Jesus Christ,” he’d boom. They opened their souls and let Thomas fill them with the good word.

But after six years, he made the difficult decision not to go into the priesthood. He had met a woman who was gentle and soft-spoken as she organized church outreach activities. Felicia, he soon realized, was someone he couldn’t live without.

He and Felicia married and started a family. Thomas enrolled at Legon University in Accra, the capital of Ghana, where he studied philosophy and religion. He then earned a post-graduate teaching degree from Cape Coast University and, after receiving a scholarship, he went to the country Africans dream about: the United States. In the Golden State, he received a master’s degree in administration from California State University, Hayward. During this time he started to work for CRS, telling Catholics about his life growing up in Ghana, how the wheat and sorghum and powdered milk that CRS provided his school kept him attending.

He now travels across the United States every year, promoting solidarity with the poor overseas, usually during CRS’ Lenten Operation Rice Bowl program, which encourages faith communities to pray, fast, learn and give. As a beneficiary-turned-staff member, he teaches American Catholics about challenges and issues in Africa.

And even though he left behind early plans to join the priesthood, Thomas can still pack a parish. He thrills crowds — many of whom know close to nothing about Africa — with his brio and charisma. He tells them what a difference “that little snack” — provided by his school with CRS funding — made in his life. He encourages them to stay engaged with the continent.

With that melodic Ghanaian accent and staccato laugh, the one where he bends in half and slaps you on the back, he sucks them in. It’s contagious. He’s contagious. Crowds can’t get enough of that glowing personality and wrenching story. Thomas sears the importance of CRS’ work into their minds, the importance of Africa.

Opposition fighters had arrived in the city of Robertsport that morning, spreading fear along the way. At the time, anyone the soldiers suspected of having ties to then-President Samuel Doe would be captured and often killed.

Dickson had been the student body president at Cuttington University — one of Liberia's best. He had frequently visited Doe at the executive mansion. In the president's office, they discussed the new student center at Cuttington. Doe was financing it. Dickson was in charge.

So when the soldiers rolled into town and sent everyone to the beach that day, Dickson had reason to worry.

"That very day, they checked my pocket and saw my [Cuttington] ID card," he says. "They said, 'Oh, these are the people that used to go to Doe.' They stripped me naked and put me in jail. Right in front of me they took two persons and killed them."

Then they came for him.

The door swung open and he was called out. Suddenly, he says, his mind went blank.

An Unlikely Hero

Up until that point in his life, Dickson had excelled: he won Peace Corps scholarships, captained his volleyball team for seven years, had a wife and three kids. One hot bullet was about to end all of that.

Then he saw George.

"I know you," the young man said, staring at him.

"I know you!" Dixon replied.

"You taught me in Sanniquellie," George said.

"For sure," Dickson said.

"What are you doing here?" George asked.

Dickson realized the young man pointing the business end of a Kalashnikov at him had once worked algebra problems in the back of a math class Dickson had taught. George was now — whether out of desperation or force — a soldier, a hired gun.

George talked to the right people and secured Dickson's release. For the next decade, George the former student became George the savior. During the blackest days of Liberia's war, when people walked miles for rice and ate raw snails, George never forgot the thoughtful teacher all the kids loved. He would squirrel away rice and save it for Dickson. Without George, Dickson says, he may have starved.

From time to time, Dickson asked George about his life, why he was involved in the fighting. George wouldn't discuss it. And Dickson may never find out. George was killed during the last months of the war.

The war is over now, and Dickson, who works on agriculture projects for Catholic Relief Services, survived it unscathed. His past cracks open a window onto Liberia's history and reveals a man who bucked the odds to become a success despite the chaos around him.

Jim and Lyn Gray were Peace Corps volunteers at Dickson's high school in the northern town of Sanniquellie in the early 1970s. Jim taught Dickson when he was a freshman in high school.

He remembers him being a classroom leader, so he put him in charge of dealing with tardy students. "Dickson was one of my top students," Jim says, "[He was] interested in learning and unfailingly polite."

After he graduated, Dickson went to a teacher training college in Zorzor in northern Liberia. He then returned to Sanniquellie where he taught math and general science for seven years. But the bug to be a school administrator bit him and he enrolled in Cuttington to get his degree in educational administration. But only days before Dickson was to graduate in 1989, the rebels moved in with an aim to use the university as a base. Dickson stayed on the campus — at great personal risk — to make sure all the students were evacuated before the rebels took the university.

"The dreams that our students from the 1970s had for their lives and the lives of their families were destroyed by the war," remembers Jim, who has returned with Lyn to Liberia to work full-time.

Jim and Lyn kept in touch with Dickson during the war. Lyn visited his family in Monrovia in 1993. "Like much of the population," she says, "they had fled to the coast in a moment of terror as the rebels took over their communities."

During that time — when food was scarce and people were struggling to survive — Dickson and his wife somehow managed to keep their kids in school. They knew it was one of the most important things they had to do. And it paid off: Dickson's three children are all university educated.

After his experience with the soldiers and George, Dickson eventually made his way to the central Liberian town of Weala, about an hour and a half from the capital, and lived at a mission while the war destroyed the country. Broke and out of work, he turned to Weala's most lucrative commodity for survival: diamonds.

He wasn't a big-time trader. He only bought "the small ones," he says. It was the only work in town.

"The bigger ones were bought by the bigger guys who had the money," he says. "We bought them just to be able to find food and survive."

Starting Over

When the fighting cooled, he moved back to Monrovia.

In 1999, some friends at CRS told him about a job opening as an educational field officer. That started his career at CRS. Other job offers came up, but his commitment to CRS, and his belief in its mission of helping the poor, won out every time.

During the war, work at CRS came in spurts. One of his best jobs, Dickson says, was in the mid-1990s when he worked in Greenville, a port city in the southeast Liberian county of Sinoe. There, he was in charge of school food programs and working with parent-teacher associations.

The city, now sparsely populated with sandy streets, radiates charm. In its halcyon days, the town was full of Americo-Liberians — those whose ancestors were freed American slaves. They built houses that looked like those in the American Deep South.

You can still see the grandeur in sagging roofs and wraparound porches. Houses often had chimneys — useless in the tropical heat — but an impressive display of aristocracy. The indoor carpeting they thought was a sign of wealth was better for growing mold than impressing guests.

American culture seeps out of the town and grins at the newcomer from the most unlikely places. From the choice of breakfast — sugar-coated donuts and Cream of Wheat — to Liberian lovers walking hand in hand, Greenville feels like an old American beach town.

When Dickson strolls down the streets, Greenvillians greet him like a lost brother. It's like Michael Jordan walking through downtown Chicago. People light up. Dickson, who never seems to be in a bad mood, makes time for everyone.

"Long time. How's it?" they ask.

"All right," he says, breaking into his trademark smile.

Dickson is back in Sinoe assessing communities for agro-enterprise, which helps farmers find markets so they can increase their income. It's a field that he believes has the potential to lift Liberia out of poverty.

Dickson can't stop talking about agro-enterprise. He gets so excited his voice — in that beautiful, lilting Liberian English – grows loud. He raves about its possibilities, about how it can heal Liberia.

"Our concentration has been on production," he says. "Agriculture should take a new direction with agro-enterprise, which is geared toward increasing not just production, but income."

It's a little crowded, but Aminata doesn't mind. The 20-year-old mother of three can finally sleep peacefully. Jusu, her three-year-old, is on one side. And Sao and Jinnah — her 7-month-old twins — are on the other. And all of them are under an insecticide-treated mosquito net, thanks to CRS. But unfortunately, this is something rare in Kailahun, a humid, crumbling province in Sierra Leone that its residents share with hoards of mosquitoes.

You can't escape them in Sajilla, where Aminata lives. In this mining village near the Liberian border, mosquitoes are everywhere. They come out at night and invite themselves into the beds of couples and kids. And if you listen closely, between clicking insects and the crashing rain, you may hear the fleshy slaps of someone's nocturnal battle with them. Mosquitoes, for many, are just a fact of life.

But for Aminata, it became too much. She couldn't stomach seeing the bites on Jusu. "Jusu was always sick with malaria," she says. "He would get very hot, become pale and refuse food. We would take him to the health post and spend a lot of money on medicine, but he would just get sick again."

In fact, according to the World Health Organization, a poor family like Aminata's living in a place like Kailahun may spend 25 percent or more of its annual income on prevention and treatment. What's worse, fewer than 5 percent of kids in Sierra Leone under five-years-old sleep under treated bed nets. Across the continent, millions don't use them. That's where Catholic Relief Services comes in, along with its donors — including the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria in Sierra Leone and other countries and U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

Each year, at least 300 million people contract serious cases of malaria worldwide, with more than 1 million people dying — the majority of them being young children in Africa. Africa Malaria Day, observed April 25th this year, highlights the commitment of African governments to roll back this debilitating disease. And from The Gambia to Ethiopia, CRS is helping to do its part.

In The Gambia, CRS is distributing free insecticide-treated bed nets and increasing malaria awareness. CRS' five-year Global Fund program aims to decrease by 30 percent malaria-related sickness and deaths among pregnant women and children under five. That's good news for mothers such as Fatou Dibba, who has received a free bed net. "The net has made a big difference to me and my family," she says. "Not even flies or cockroaches can come inside once the net is down."

In the Democratic Republic of Congo, CRS is working with local partners and government agents in 25 underserved rural health zones to reduce the number of children and mothers falling sick and dying from common diseases, including malaria. With funding from USAID and the United Nations, CRS initiatives will impact more than 1 million people over five years.

CRS is also working with district and national health departments and the diocese of Embu in Kenya to prevent deaths of children primarily from malaria, pneumonia and malnutrition. As part of the USAID-funded child survival program, CRS has helped to upgrade health services at the district level in Embu. Health professionals are being trained to better manage cases of childhood malaria. In addition, community volunteers are teaching households to spot the danger signs of malaria, and families are gaining greater access to treated bed nets.

Across Africa, most people accept malaria as a fact of life. CRS aims to change this. A new initiative in Ethiopia helps community members — many of whom can't read — take malaria prevention into their own hands. An innovative manual shows community members how to work together to determine how malaria is spread and, more importantly, take action to stop its spread locally.

It's CRS programs like these that help people like Aminata. But CRS also educates African medical professionals so they can help their own community members.

Take Nemah Ellie. She is a traditional birth attendant who works with expecting mothers in Sierra Leone. Nemah says the lack of information is a major part of the problem.

"People used to believe that malaria came from sucking too many oranges or eating too much palm oil," she says. "Some people even believed that witchcraft caused children to die from malaria."

Now Nemah, trained by CRS, instructs expecting mothers to take at least two doses of oral medication during their pregnancy. This helps clear the parasite from their bodies and helps their unborn children grow. This education works. Just ask Aminata. "My children do not have the rash any longer from mosquito bites," she says.