Emily Kahm is finishing up a fellowship at Augustana College, where she teaches a course in American Catholicism that is centered around the work of women religious. She sends her students out to interview a sister, an assignment that's generated surprising encounters.

Sr. Maria Louise Edwards has been a Felician Sister for eight years. Graduating from New York University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in theater, she has ministered as mission leader for Holy Name of Mary College School in Canada, and as assistant director of the Angela Spirituality Center in Pomona, California. She has also worked with women involved in domestic violence, and served on a team with a Catholic deliverance ministry.

When 200 girls from local Catholic high schools arrive at Philadelphia's St. John Neumann Center on Feb. 12, they'll be participating in an event that's a tiny bit of history in the making: a one-day seminar marking the first time the (mostly black) Oblate Sisters of Providence and the (mostly white) Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary will collaborate on a vocations project.

This story appears in the Sustainable Development Goal 6: Clean Water and Sanitation feature series. View the full series.

The Sister Water Project is just one of dozens of sister-led efforts to bring clean drinking water to those without. But project committee member Sr. Judy Sinnwell said the venture has been as much about changing those involved as it is about changing the lives of those given fresh water. "When we set out to do this, we were thinking of what would happen out there as we met a need," Sinnwell said. "But what happened in the congregation was it impacted all of us."

This story appears in the Abuse of sisters feature series. View the full series.

While sisters praised Pope Francis' recent acknowledgment of the issue, they called for follow-through by establishing protocols for reporting the physical and sexual abuse of sisters and changing the underlying clerical and power structures.

You might have seen Sr. Norma Pimentel around: hoping to talk with President Donald Trump when he made his Texas-Mexico border visit in January; speaking at the United Nations; testifying before Congress; being part of an international satellite broadcast in 2015 with Pope Francis just before the pope's U.S. visit. But that's not all.