Project Compassion 2025: uniting against poverty

Catholic aid agency Caritas Australia has launched its annual Lenten fundraiser, Project Compassion, with a call to open our hearts to others in need.

Hundreds of students from Catholic schools across Melbourne and regional Victoria met at Emmaus College in Vermont to plan their schools’ paths to achieving their Project Compassion goals over the next six weeks.

Archbishop Peter A Comensoli led the proceedings, with music provided by the Emmaus choir.

Reach out in love and acceptance, recognising that every single person has dignity, value and worth.

Elaborating on the theme Caritas has chosen this year, ‘Unite against Poverty’, the Archbishop recalled the passage in the Book of Matthew where Jesus says: ‘For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’

Project Compassion ‘asks us to think of others’, Archbishop Comensoli said. ‘Reach out in love and acceptance, recognising that every single person has dignity, value and worth.

‘It is significant that we come together to do this in this year of Jubilee 2025, when we celebrate our call to be pilgrims of hope,’ he said.

Referring to a passage in John’s Gospel, Archbishop Comesoli said, ‘Jesus prays that we may all be one.’

‘This is such a significant prayer at a time when the world is so sadly divided and when there is so much hostility between communities, … a terrifying prevalence of war, dislocation and violence.’

‘The message of Project Compassion this year is unite against poverty.

‘We pray that we can unite to bring peace and justice and so care for the world and the whole human family in the way God commands us to do.’

Project Compassion has been running for 61 years, beginning as a fundraiser for a fishing boat for Tiwi Islanders and growing to a multi-million dollar Lenten appeal that has now raised nearly $300 million for people all around the world.

Caritas says 1,700 Catholic schools nationally and 1,200 parishes took part in Project Compassion in 2024, raising $9.7 million.

This year sees the introduction of a new Project Compassion event, the Long Walk for Water.

Groups or individuals pledge to walk 30 minutes or more a day for 40 days, sponsored by friends, family or colleagues.

Parishes taking part in the regular ‘Give it up for Lent’ event are encouraged this year to consider a social media fast.

Students are once again taking part in the Big Water Walk, where schools design their own walking challenge to raise money from the school community.

Many schools have arranged other fundraisers too.

Caritas Australia Mission Director Michael McGirr says the students are creative in their fundraising, noting that one school is planning a dunk-the-teacher day, with the full support of its amenable teaching staff.

This year’s Project Compassion launch featured the stories of three vulnerable people who have been helped to lift themselves out of poverty with the help of funds raised by Caritas supporters.

Caritas says the three are examples of people ‘who have overcome challenges in their own lives and gone on to become beacons of hope and resilience in their communities.’

They are the young Samoan Toefuata’iga, whose school now has access to plentiful fresh water, and Lam, a young man with a disability in rural Vietnam, whose training in graphic arts has given him employment and independence.

Lent is a season of reflection, prayer and almsgiving. It is a time when we are called to examine our lives and make sacrifices to help those less fortunate.

There’s also Irene, a single mother living in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

Caritas partners in DRC provided her with a sewing machine and training, and she has become a skilled seamstress.

‘Lent is a season of reflection, prayer and almsgiving,’ says Kirsten Sayers, Interim CEO at Caritas Australia.

‘It is a time when we are called to examine our lives and make sacrifices to help those less fortunate.’

In his homily, Archbishop Comensoli said we shouldn’t just think of Project Compassion as ‘doing things for others’.

‘First, they are doing it for themselves. And we should remember that,’ he said.

 ’So what we might do in terms of Caritas this Lent, what our actions of giving might be able to contribute, is not something of a doing to others. It is a doing with others.

‘Our prayer and action, along with their prayer and action, may bring about the gift of the presence of God in their lives and that joy that Jesus asked for.’