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We square up with the harsh realities and heavy statistics to find glimmers of solution, of fearless "Creative as we may be, we are but middlemen. Fatigue. At 22.

Yet our effort has never been more vital." ~ Kate Schmidgall, Founder

The stories dominating our day are characterized by poverty, corruption, disease, devastation, abuse, and war, with political punditry and petulance for flair. There is a multimillion-dollar media machine powering and pushing this content 24/7. Unbalanced, this diet is toxic—cause for fatigue, cynicism, and despair. This was dr

iven home for Kate Schmidgall when she was invited to address a couple hundred socially-conscious and concerned college students on a topic of their choosing: Compassion fatigue. As in: Opposite of zest, vigor, idealism and unbridled ambition. This isn’t fatigue from the development field or years of service as social workers, teachers, and tested professionals. These students have yet to earn a bachelor’s. And they’re tired. Tired of caring; tired of hearing about all the ways they could care or should care. They're burning out at the starting line. How many feel that way: increasingly numb to statistics and paralyzed by awareness campaigns rather than empowered. Bittersweet Monthly is a practice in learning how to see – squaring up with the harsh realities and heavy statistics to find glimmers of solution, of fearlessness and faithfulness, of hope. Always finding them, Bittersweet Monthly builds creative teams to tell those stories artistically through film, photography, music, written word and design. Together Bittersweet Monthly, contributing artists and organizations craft a counter narrative—one that refuses cynicism, defies apathy, and celebrates the right and good that the world needs more of.

05/19/2026

On an unseasonably warm Saturday morning in April, the Homes Not Borders ( ) team and volunteers convene for the weekly food distribution program. 15 boxes of dry goods–rice, beans, lentils, salt, sugar, cooking oil–sit awaiting the addition of fresh produce.

Obaid Safi left Afghanistan and resettled in the US in 2021. HNB handled the apartment setup for him and his family. A father of four small children ages 2-9, he relies on the bi-weekly delivery of groceries from HNB. He has been waiting for approval of his green card status since 2024.

“We live and work here legally and pay our taxes, but because we are waiting for our green cards we got our benefits cut.” In the wake of mass legislative changes in 2025, SNAP benefits were revoked for thousands of refugees due to their green card statuses.

On a biweekly basis, HNB volunteers pack and hand-deliver a 40–50 lb bag of halal food to roughly 30 families like Obaid’s who have had their SNAP benefits revoked due to green card status. The program supports families for 3-6 months, helping to bridge the enormous gap created by the legislative change.

Read the full story on BitterSweet Monthly

Words by Serena Jones
Film by

05/08/2026

New from BitterSweet Monthly:

We first highlighted Homes Not Borders ( ) in August of 2022, when they were in the midst of coordinating 8-10 apartment setups a week for newly arriving refugee families. Since then, much has changed. With US visa programs shuttered and federal funding for refugee assistance severed, HNB saw a chasm of need open wider and wider. They chose to respond as they always have, with grit, determination, and a can’t stop, won’t stop sort of energy.

Expanding from home setup services, HNB hired caseworkers who’d been let go from resettlement agencies in the budget cuts and began assisting about 40 families. They have prioritized their artisan programs like Sew Successful to equip women with entrepreneurial trade skills and built out a food distribution program just as SNAP benefits vanished for thousands of families.
Founder and Executive Director Laura Osuri ( )explains, “We did a lot more than I thought we could.”

Read the full story on BitterSweet Monthly.

Written by
Photographs by
2026 Film by
2026 Interviews by Serena Jones

04/30/2026

Border Joy

“What I intend to do is to showcase the good on both sides of the border. And I think that that is precisely what connected me to Abara,” says Yorch.

Photo of Yorch with his “Border Joy” print block (SWIPE), and the finished print.

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Abara allows for your dreams to develop and helps you to find joy in the tragedy. That’s really how our slogan came to be: Border Joy. That’s what it’s all about—that we can find joy in suffering. — Rosa

Learn more about at BitterSweetMonthly.com

03/27/2026

“It sort of breaks my heart that has to exist at all,” Jenesis explains. “I think in this culture we've gotten to a point where we have to be this intentional about getting people to connect with each other.”

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In 2023, the US Surgeon General published an 80-some page report titled Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation: The U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory on the Healing Effects of Social Connection and Community. In it, Dr. Vivek Murthy provides an unsettling list of the health implications of loneliness. Which is to say, our highest national health authority is worried about the ways that our mental, behavioural, and anatomical health are all put seriously at risk simply by the condition of isolation.

Loneliness is a disease. It’s not hard to see that we are the medicine. That is why SeekHealing exists.

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Portraits of the SeekHealing community by David Schmidgall

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Read the full story at BitterSweetMonthly.com

03/02/2026

🔥 New story from the team at BitterSweetMonthly.com

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While our world is an evergrowing interconnected jumble of supply chains and Wi-Fi signals, it's hard to think of a time when humanity has been more isolated from one another. Self-dependent, self-absorbed, and self-conscious, we form bonds with objects, ideas, and habits that cannot love us back.

SeekHealing gently guides us back to one another, crafting the connective tissue needed to reestablish healthy bonds within community.

We are grateful to SeekHealing for hosting our team (despite an impending snow storm) and for the work they are doing to prioritize that which makes us truly human—our need for one another.

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Read more at BitterSweetMonthly.com

Writer:
Photographer:
Organization:

02/20/2026

Friends, please indulge us in a Steve Jeter ( ) appreciation post.

Veteran BitterSweet filmmaker and photographer, Steve has been with us since the very first print issue more than 15 years ago. He’s the guy behind many BitterSweet film projects, traversing the world from Egypt to Israel and Palestine, Vietnam, Ghana, and Guatemala.

He’s an Emmy award winning filmmaker and is often found working for the UNDP, Red Cross, World Vision and many other organizations, and, of course, BitterSweet.

Steve was recently the recipient of a Telly Award for BitterSweet’s story featuring Breadwinners in the United Kingdom. 🇬🇧

On this February Friday, we celebrate you, Steve, and your commitment to sharing stories that reject cynicism, defy apathy, and celebrate good.

12/31/2025

As we close out the year, we reflect on the stories that matter most—stories of hope, courage, and the pursuit of true peace. Here’s to planting seeds of hope for a future where peace can truly flourish.

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Photographs from BitterSweetMonthly.com: “Dinner by the Sea,” Issue 123, featuring Combatants for Peace.

Photo 1: Avner Wishnitzer, a professor of history at Tel Aviv University and co-founder of Combatants for Peace, poses for a portrait beneath an olive tree in the side yard adjacent to the CfP office in Beit Jala.

Avner was formerly a member of an elite commando unit in the Israeli army stationed in the south Hebron hills in the early 2000s. It was there that his boyhood understanding of Israel as “a safe haven for the Jews and a liberal democracy” began to crumble. Increasingly aware of the systematic oppression, Avner chose to confront his cognitive dissonance. In late 2004 he refused to serve in the Occupied Territories, becoming what’s known in the IDF as a refusenik. Months later, Avner and a few other conscientious objectors were invited to Bethlehem to meet similar-minded Palestinians who were interested in learning about the refuseniks.

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Photo 2: Sulaiman Khatib, co-founder of CfP, sits in the courtyard beside the Combatants for Peace offices in Beit Jala.

Sulaiman grew up in Hizma, a village in northeast Jerusalem, as part of an indigenous Palestinian family with roots documented in the Ottoman archives as far back as the 15th century. In his adolescent years, Sulaiman registered with the Fatah Youth Movement and became a Freedom Fighter. At 14, a violent choice sent him to prison until his mid-twenties. Ironically it was there his education and practice of nonviolence began. In the prison’s library—“The Revolutionary University,” he calls it—he studied resistance movements, the examples of Nelson Mandela and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and taught himself Hebrew and English.

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Read the full story and learn more about Combatants for Peace at BitterSweetMonthly.com

Portraits by
Words by

12/15/2025

Read full reflection “Satan Falls Like Lightning,” in Cairn Vol. ONE and at BitterSweetMonthly.com

📷 by

12/02/2025

On this ,
we kindly ask that you forget us.

11/28/2025

Excerpt from BitterSweet’s gift guide:

City renewal recognizes that vibrant communities—whether in bustling metropolises or small towns—require intentional cultivation. This theme celebrates gifts that support urban agriculture projects, community art initiatives, neighborhood revitalization efforts, and enterprises that create dignified employment in underserved areas.

In neighborhoods where hope feels distant and dreams seem deferred, extraordinary people are choosing to stay, to invest, to believe that another story is possible. These are the urban visionaries who see potential in vacant lots, who transform abandoned buildings into sanctuaries of healing, who plant gardens where others see only concrete. Their work reminds us that cities are not collections of structures but communities of souls—places where flourishing is not a luxury but a birthright for every person who calls them home.

The gifts we choose can either perpetuate cycles of extraction from struggling communities or participate in the sacred work of renewal. These carefully selected offerings invite us to celebrate our loved ones while investing in the dreamers and builders who refuse to abandon the neighborhoods others have written off. Each purchase becomes a prayer made manifest—a tangible vote for the belief that every corner of every city deserves dignity, beauty, and the chance to flourish.

Photo from BitterSweetMonthly.com Issue 039 / The Mechanics of Life, Work and Bicycles
📸 by

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