Haydee Diaz’s work as a program director with Catholic Relief Services is more than a career — it’s a deeply personal mission.

Haydee Diaz draws on her own experience as a Cuban refugee in her work with Catholic Relief Services. (Photo by Nick Berenz)

Diaz was born in Cuba, and her family was desperate to leave the country but had been denied an exit visa repeatedly. So, her father made a bold move: Along with thousands of other Cuban refugees, he took his family and sought refuge at the Peruvian embassy in Havana.

“We jumped the wall and asked for political asylum. That was how our journey started,” said Diaz. “And we ended up on a shrimp boat called the Sun Hippie, coming to Key West in the middle of a terrible storm.”

Diaz shared this story in her keynote address at the annual Archbishop’s Reception for Catholic Relief Services on Monday, Sept. 28, at the Wisconsin Club in Milwaukee.

Now that she works around the world, Diaz understands why her father made that “extraordinary, audacious decision” — because she sees his face in the people she meets each and every day.

“I see it in mothers who will sacrifice their own food so that their child will have something to eat that night for dinner. And I have seen it in parents who understand that education is not only the best, but sometimes the only, opportunity their children will have for a better future,” she said.

Raised in California, Diaz earned her undergraduate degree at Santa Clara University and her master’s degree from Harvard. She currently directs a CRS program supporting 13,000 farmers and their families in Guatemala and Honduras.

Today, organizations like CRS and their partners are “navigating one of the most challenging and turbulent times in our sector,” said Diaz. The material needs of the world’s poorest and most vulnerable communities continue to increase, she said, driven by factors including mass displacement due to political conflicts, fragile health systems and the impact of climate change on weather patterns.

Diaz cited the historic drought being experienced in Central America.

“The farmers that I work with currently have lost forty, and in some cases, a hundred percent of their corn and bean crops from their most recent harvest,” she said. “This means that they just simply will not have food to put on the table for their families.”

And yet, “unfortunately, oftentimes the funding (for international aid organizations) is decreasing and becoming increasingly uncertain,” Diaz said.

Despite those challenges, organizations like CRS continue to find ways to respond.

For instance, CRS dedicated $200,000 to the building of rainwater reservoirs that can support up to 20 families each, even in the midst of a dry season.

“We continue to see extraordinary resilience and extraordinary determination,” Diaz told the reception’s attendees, “and it is the support of people like you who make that possible.”

The Archbishop’s Reception for Catholic Relief Services has been held annually in Milwaukee for 19 years, gathering CRS donors and new supporters to hear about — as the event’s emcee Portia Young put it — the “quiet work” done by the organization around the globe.

CRS has a presence in 95 countries and impacts more than 200 million people of all races, religions and nationalities through programs encompassing emergency response efforts, health initiatives, agriculture support, education, microfinance and peacebuilding. Its work is carried out alongside 768 local partners that can respond to crises impacting the populations served.

“The impact of CRS is for millions of people, but it really is experienced one family, one person, one community at a time,” said Young. “This (event) is a wonderful testimony to the community of Milwaukee, the faithful here that we have in this archdiocese that support the important work of this organization.”

Haydee Diaz, keynote speaker at the annual Archbishop’s Reception for Catholic Relief Services on Monday, Sept. 28, at the Wisconsin Club in Milwaukee.
(Photo by Nick Berenz)

The reception, which is underwritten by corporate and private sponsors led by Catholic Financial Life, is a major fundraiser for the organization’s efforts — “the engine that supports our programming,” as Diaz described it.

In his opening prayer, Archbishop Jeffrey S. Grob said that “we are privileged to be an extension in the work of Catholic Relief Services, to be the extension of God’s hand in the care and the love for others.”

“May we not grow weary in bringing healing and basic sustenance and renewed life to those in greatest need,” he prayed.

Supported by donors and grounded in the Gospel, CRS has “a strength that most organizations do not have,” Diaz said.

“In times of crisis and in times of turbulence, we are steadfast, and we are steady. We are the Church. We continue to work with moral clarity, with values, with purpose and with unwavering faith,” she said. “We do not shift; we do not change. We are deeply rooted in our commitment to lift up the human dignity of each one of our brothers and sisters in Christ.”