Next Sunday, 17 March, all Catholic parishes across Germany will be collecting donations for Misereor. Every year on the 5th Sunday of Lent, the episcopal organisation for development cooperation asks for donations for its international and national project, education, lobbying and advocacy work in 86 countries in Africa and the Middle East, Asia and Oceania, Latin America and the Caribbean as well as in Europe.

This year's Lent campaign is based on the motto "I don't care about beans" and invites people to join Misereor partner organisations from Colombia in campaigning for sustainable agriculture, the right to food and healthy nutrition. "With the deliberately somewhat irritating slogan, which is a variation on the well-known saying 'Don't I care about the bean', we want to make people curious about the power of the bean," emphasises Misereor's Managing Director Pirmin Spiegel. "We invite you to take a closer look at the situation in a rural region of Colombia, where the population lives in violent contexts and struggles to organise the necessities of life on a daily basis. We are taking a closer look and recognising the needs, requirements and potential of people in the Global South in particular. The associated goal is to make this world a place worth living in for everyone and to give everyone the option of a dignified and healthy life."

Spiegel is calling on people in Germany to show solidarity with suffering, disadvantaged and disenfranchised people in the Global South next Sunday and to support Misereor's activities with a generous donation. People in the Global South were counting on the commitment of the population in Germany, who could make a contribution in favour of countries with a high poverty rate with a variety of activities such as charity runs, Lenten meals or the organisation of church services.

Spiegel combines his appeal with a political demand: "Good nutrition for all requires diversity from the field to the plate and fairer distribution. That is why we are campaigning for the rights of family farms, which grow around 70 per cent of the world's food and are able to provide a stable and balanced diet. They need access to and control over land, water and seeds. And they must be given the opportunity to market their products locally."