#Do1Thing

We hear the words “refugee crisis” all the time, and the sheer magnitude of the current situation – more than 68 million people forced to leave their homes to seek safety, with 25.4 million of them having had to flee their countries – can leave us feeling powerless and frustrated. Can anything be done?

The real crisis is not a “refugee crisis”, but a crisis of solidarity, or what Pope Francis has called “the globalisation of indifference”. The response that is needed is both individual and collective: solidarity is not just an ideal, but is expressed in concrete actions and steps that draw us closer to our neighbours, in whatever situation they find themselves.

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With the #Do1Thing campaign, JRS shows what individuals are doing to welcome, protect, promote, and integrate refugees in their communities. These are ordinary people, doing simple things: offering friendship, or helping with a language class. They are not engaged in many great and heroic acts, but often are just offering one thing, one form of support, one day in a week. Often they just #Do1Thing.

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Pope Francis says that if you can bring hope to one person, “then there will be another ‘you’, and another ‘you’, and it turns into an ‘us’…when there is an ‘us’, there begins a revolution.”

Please share your own #Do1Thing story, so that others can know that they are not acting alone, but are part of a movement, a revolution of compassion and tenderness.