Over the last 14 years, people served by Minneapolis-based workers’ rights organization CTUL (Centro de Trabajadores Unidos in La Lucha) have recovered $2.7 million in lost wages, said Jilian Clearman, its director of development.

“Sometimes that’s a couple hundred dollars that was missing from one person’s paycheck,” Clearman said. “Sometimes it’s a huge settlement that involves six figures and big groups of workers who’ve been systematically ripped off for years.”

For the 2021-2022 grant year, CTUL is one of three organizations in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis that applied for and is receiving national funding from the annual Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD), the anti-poverty program of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. The others are the Ostara Initiative which, in Minnesota, supports incarcerated pregnant women and new mothers through the Minnesota Prison Doula Project, and St. Paul Youth Services, a nonprofit that focuses on helping youth improve in school, stay out of the juvenile justice system and resolve family conflicts without police intervention, hospitalization or removal from the home.

On the weekend of Nov. 20-21, parishes will collect money for CCHD. Of that collection, about 25% will be distributed locally during the 2022-2023 grant year through a Christian Sharing Fund managed by the Center for Mission with the assistance of an archdiocesan advisory board. Seventy-five percent of the collection will be distributed by the CCHD to organizations across the country.

From the money collected at parishes last November, six organizations in the archdiocese are accessing a total of $255,000 in funding.

The three organizations receiving money for 2021-2022 through the Christian Sharing Fund are Hispanic Outreach of Goodhue County, which advocates for just and equal treatment in housing, safety and immigration rights; St. Paul-based Metropolitan Interfaith Council on Affordable Housing (MICAH); and All Square, a Minneapolis nonprofit social enterprise that works with people being released from prison through strength-based coaching and entrepreneurship courses, optional therapy and an entrepreneurial fellowship: a craft grilled-cheese restaurant.

As a current recipient, Clearman said the additional funds are helping CTUL meet its mission of furthering workplace rights, education and leadership development for low-wage workers. The organization helps develop the ability and confidence people need to defend their rights and participate in policy campaigns for such initiatives as paid sick days and raising the minimum wage, she said.

Wage theft brings many workers to CTUL, Clearman said, “which is incredibly common in low-wage workplaces — something that really shocked me when I got into this work.”

To learn more about the CCHD, visit usccb.org/committees/catholic-campaign-human-development