GSR Today - It was very exciting for me to attend an international meeting in Nairobi, Kenya, at the end of October: Catholic Sisters, Champions of Sustainable Development. Sisters from east, central and west Africa gathered — 140 women — to learn about the SDGS and their potential roles in helping to implement them.

In early November, Lakota Sioux Therese Martin celebrated her 100th birthday in the crowded parish hall at Fort Yates, North Dakota, Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. To all gathered she said, "To see my people standing up for our rights, makes me so proud. Whenever I read about the water protectors at the camps along the Missouri and Cannonball Rivers, I pray they fight to the bitter end."

"It is necessary to respond to the globalization of migration with the globalization of charity and cooperation, in such a way as to make the conditions for migrants more humane."

GSR Today - Two years later, the situation sounds largely the same in this war-torn nation: Adama Dieng, the U.N. special adviser on the prevention of genocide came back with grim news. "I saw all the signs that ethnic hatred and targeting of civilians could evolve into genocide if something is not done now to stop it," he said.

Global Sisters Report often focuses on work that sisters do to help those who are hungry or have food insecurity. This week, as the United States celebrates the feast of Thanksgiving, we focus on sisters who are active in food justice — trying to make sure that everyone not only has enough to eat but also access to healthy choices.

"We in religious life can be tempted to feel complacent or unduly proud because we are working toward a future of sustainable prosperity. The challenge may be to ask ourselves if we are too prosperous."

Ask Haitians about lingering problems of poverty and hunger, and talk inevitably returns to poor political leaders. "There are no real leaders in Haiti and the ones we have are corrupt," said Corrielan Thérése Moléron, a member of a women's self-help group in Port-au-Prince organized by Missionary Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

See for Yourself - Over the weekend I was watching a documentary on TV about life in a maximum security prison. As I viewed the program, two stark truths were astounding.

Decades ago, as a child growing up in the rolling hills of Northeast Iowa, I would daydream of simpler times, of the days when people were pioneers and steadily establishing their families and homes and building communities upon frontiers. I left the small town in the late 1990s shortly after my high school graduation. I began to develop friendships with people who didn't look like me.

"Try as we can to fill the cracks in our hearts, we must open ourselves to God to do the heavy lifting."