GSR Today - As the world honors humanitarians today, August 19, the U.N.'s World Humanitarian Day, it's good to consider the debate that has been brewing for some time about whether the "aid world" has been a success or whether it is broken and needs to be fixed.

Demographic collapse is tough ground to build a case for hope on. Yet, that's exactly where Marcia Allen, CSJ, began her presidential address, entitled "Transformation – An Experiment in Hope," to the Assembly of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) last week. She didn't talk about diminishment or downsizing, as women religious are apt to do.

Dr. Laura M. Leming, F.M.I. (Marianist) is an associate professor of sociology at the University of Dayton and serves on the Board of Trustees of St. Mary's University. Her areas of expertise include the sociology of religion, global religions, and social psychology.

This story appears in the LCWR 2016 feature series. View the full series.

GSR Today - Thank you, sisters. My first Leadership Conference of Women Religious assembly was awesome. Inspiring. Humbling. Gratifying. Inspiring. Heart-enriching. Heart-expanding. Joyful. Painful. Peaceful. Mindful. Spirit-filled. Delightful. Amazing.

The School Sisters of Notre Dame sponsored Judith Odero, now 34, to get a high school education when her family could afford to educate only their sons. Now, she's giving back with her own school. This is the story of how one scholarship beneficiary created a ripple effect reaching far beyond what the sisters could have imagined.

Sr. KC Young, a Dominican Sister of Sinsinawa, works with inmates and ex-inmate through the Freedom Project in Seattle, an educational program that teaches mindfulness and nonviolent communication courses in five prisons throughout Washington. The project was initially founded to work solely in prisons, Young said, but "we realized that because this is transformational work and we're talking about connection, then we need to be connecting with those post-prison as well."

Rose Achiego has been a professional journalist since 2003 with experience in radio program production, presentation and management. She has worked for Catholic radio stations in both Kenya and South Sudan. She also writes print and online news for the Catholic websites regionally, nationally and internationally.

The consolidated parish called La Santísima Trinidad, Most Blessed Trinity, took an empty church building, removed the pews, and filled it with food. Families in all shapes and sizes, the elderly on a fixed income, those offered citizenship and those denied it, those with homes and those without are all invited to receive food.