In his message for the 2018 World Day of Migrants and Refugees, Pope Francis reminded us that Jesus Christ “entrusts to the Church’s motherly love” all those forced to leave their homeland in search of a better future. Pope Francis would know well the words of the founder of his own Jesuit order, St Ignatius of Loyola, that “love ought to show itself more in deeds than in words.” In 2018, the Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) manifested its own Jesuit DNA by providing services directly to 677,804 people driven from their homes by persecution, war, and disasters. With 68.5 million people forcibly displaced at the beginning of 2018, this meant that JRS served one in every 100 people in the world who have had to flee their homes in search of safety.

In our 2018 Annual Report, you will read of the success of the Global Education Initiative that JRS launched at the end of 2015. With two years to go before the end of the campaign, we have already surpassed our goal of giving 250,000 people the education they need to create a future for themselves and their families. With the generous support of many people who share our belief that love is shown more in deeds than in words, we have also raised 81 per cent of the USD 35 million that we need to keep these refugees in education.

Read about the education that JRS provides to 253,496 refugees around the world, and all the other ways we show our love for refugees, in our Annual Report.