Our strapline is: 'We believe in life before death'.
What does this mean? Who are we? How is Christian Aid different from other international aid agencies? What is it we do and why?
History
A little history may help answer these frequently asked questions. Christian Aid was founded in 1945 when Christians wanted to offer relief and reconciliation in post-war Europe. From its early days Christian Aid has assisted people and communities on the basis of need, regardless of race and religion. Today it is the official relief, development and advocacy agency of 41 sponsoring churches in Britain and Ireland, and it is part of the worldwide church community. Christian Aid is, self-evidently, a Christian organisation. The board, appointed by the sponsoring churches, is trustee of the vision, purpose and values of Christian Aid, supplying a mandate to work for poverty eradication. We are active in some of the world’s poorest countries.
Powered by faith and hope: Christian Aid director Daleep Mukarji
What we believe
Christian Aid’s work is founded on Christian faith and powered by hope. It acts to change an unjust world through charity, providing practical love and care for neighbours in need. It is driven by the gospel of good news to the poor, and inspired by the vision of a new Earth where everyone lives in justice, peace and plenty.
We help those in need
Christian Aid follows the teaching of Jesus Christ, who commanded his followers to love their neighbour and work for a better world. Jesus identified with the poor, excluded, weak, sick and oppressed. He said he wanted everyone to have life, abundantly, hence, ‘We believe in life before death’.
Christian Aid is prophetic, outspoken and on the side of the poor and marginalised; we are agents of change.
Christian Aid believes everyone is created equal, with inherent dignity and basic rights. When people are dehumanised – denied food, water, dignity, justice, education, healthcare and chance for an income – Christian Aid stands with them in the struggle to realise their civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights.
We are inspired by great Christian visionaries like South African anti-apartheid and humanitarian justice activist Desmond Tutu, US civil rights movement leader Martin Luther King and Dietrich Bonheoffer, participant in the German resistance against Nazism.
We believe in the just and sustainable use of the earth and its resources so that the greed of one generation will not create poverty for the next. We are proud of our Christian identity and heritage. It defines who we are and how we work.
What we do
We cross divides of religion, race and nationality, acting as the good Samaritan and going the extra mile to proclaim release to captives.
Wherever we can make a difference, Christian Aid works with and through local organisations – our partners. For many years Christian Aid has worked with partners of all faiths and none who share our vision of championing the eradication of poverty and injustice.
We work in more than 50 countries, for example Afghanistan, the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Colombia, Nigeria, Kenya and Brazil. We are frequently not alone: Christian Aid often works with sister agencies, such as Action by Churches Together International, in disaster relief activities.
With our partners and allies, we uphold a commitment to honesty, professionalism, mutual respect, accountability and diversity. We are committed to the Red Cross and Red Crescent Code of Conduct, meaning we never link aid with evangelism.
Our staff share the diversity of nationality, faith and ethnicity yet are all committed to the essential purpose of Christian Aid and its role as a Christian relief, development and advocacy agency.
Christian Aid is a voice for the poor, not afraid of getting political. We believe that God does not want poverty, injustice, discrimination and unsustainable development in the world. So we campaign for change, challenging structures and systems that make and keep people poor. The values of justice, peace and love must challenge the world’s values and our own, prompting us to re-examine how our lifestyles and decisions affect others. That is our charitable purpose and part of our Christian vocation. It does not mean getting involved in party politics but it does mean confronting with the truth people who have the power to change things. Christian Aid does not try to hide its anger when poor people are exploited.
Hope into action
Whether they have a faith or not, people support Christian Aid because they know we have the courage and integrity to take the difficult positions. They expect us to deliver good-quality aid that tangibly helps people in need. They know we are a bold, incisive, effective, efficient, results orientated, growing and ambitious organisation that equips and encourages people to put their faith into action.
All our work is based on the spirit of partnership. We want people to pray for us, to act, to give and to get involved with us in a variety of ways. Together we can have great influence and impact. We will educate and mobilise people from all kinds of backgrounds to build a global movement that can change the course of history.
Our faith tells us that ending poverty and suffering is not simply a dream but an imperative from God. It gives us the confidence to turn this hope into practical action.
Working with others is vital to the nature and purpose of Christian Aid, and we take seriously interfaith and intercommunity dialogue and cooperation. We are part of the commitment by churches in Britain and Ireland to help build a more inclusive, just and sustainable world community: one world – our world – where all people can live with dignity.
Daleep Mukarji
Director, Christian Aid
Christian Aid Week 11-17 May 08
Time for action on climate change
As sea levels rise in coastal Bangladesh, saltwater is contaminating the water supply of riverbank and coastal communities. These communities also face losing homes to rapidly increasing river erosion.
The changing climate is poised to reverse decades of development. Forget making poverty history; poverty is set to become permanent unless we address climate change as a matter of urgency.
Your donations this Christian Aid Week will help communities in the developing world to cope with the effects of climate change. But money in itself is not enough. We also need to act. We can all use our influence on politicians and business leaders in the rich world – who are the ones making many of the key decisions affecting poor countries. Global warming is not just a distant forecast. It’s already happening now, and poor people are the ones who are being hit the hardest.
Climate change increases the unpredictability and severity of extreme weather patterns. During the past 35 years, hurricane-force storms have almost doubled. Eleven million people are threatened by hunger because of years of unprecedented drought in east Africa. Ninety per cent of the victims of weather-related natural disasters during the 1990s were from poor countries. And an estimated 150,000 people are dying annually from diseases exacerbated by the changing climate. For example, scientists predict that malaria-carrying mosquitoes, which cannot survive at low temperatures, are now spreading the disease further as regions warm up, putting hundreds of thousands of people at risk.
And the outlook is bleak. Even if we are able to stabilise CO2 emissions, global average temperatures are still likely to rise by at least 2°C by 2050. If this is the case, 1-3 billion people will face acute water shortages. Thirty million more people will go hungry as crops fail across the globe. Melting ice caps, combined with the thermal expansion of the oceans, means that sea levels are set to rise dramatically. A rise of one metre would displace ten million people in Vietnam and 8-10 million in Egypt, as well as potentially submerging around 16 per cent of Bangladesh.
Climate change is an issue of injustice. The world’s poorest people have done the least to contribute to the problem, and yet they are suffering the worst effects. Carbon has fuelled the rich world’s wealth and development. But the devastating impact of our CO2 emissions on our climate means that poor countries cannot now develop in the same way.
Christian Aid is pressing for an international agreement to ensure that rich countries dramatically cut their CO2 emissions so that poor countries can develop in a way that won’t further increase climate change and condemn them to perpetual poverty. This agreement will call for rich countries to cut their own CO2 emissions by at least 80 per cent by 2050; compensate poor countries for the damage already caused by climate change so they have the resources to adapt; and assist poor countries to develop in ways that will limit CO2 emissions.
Eighty per cent by 2050 means cuts of five per cent every year. This is the absolute minimum action required if global warming is to be kept below the tipping point of 2°C. Five per cent every year is a big challenge. But it’s one that we must meet. Millions of lives depend on it.
As citizens of a rich country, we are all in a powerful position to make a difference. And this is where we need your help. Please sign the prayer and action card this Christian Aid Week, and send a message to the government that urgent action is needed on climate change now.
Campaigning works. Previous campaigns have delivered real change on issues such as debt and fair trade. We need to take action on climate change now, before it is too late.
Find out more about Christian Aid’s Climate Changed campaign, and sign up to take further action, by visiting www.christianaid.org.uk/climate or www.christianaid.ie/climate
© Christian Aid December 2007
UK registered charity number 1105851
Company number 5171525
Republic of Ireland charity number CHY 6998
Christian Aid Week 11-17 May 08
‘If we come together, we can achieve amazing things.’
Through the new village pani parishad (water council), Minu Basar (centre left) has learned how to harvest rainwater safely so that she doesn’t have to travel for a whole day and cross a dangerous river to fetch drinking water
Rekha Biswas from Bangladesh provides the most humbling and inspirational example for Christian Aid Week. This courageous lady goes from house to house, talking to families about the problems they face getting water. And vitally, she challenges gender roles. She encourages women to come to meetings of the local pani parishad, the village water council.
Getting clean water is a problem throughout Bangladesh. In the northeast, water scarcity and lack of infrastructure create difficulties for the many landless communities living there. In the central low-lying wetlands, the land is flooded for more than half the year and underground water sources can be contaminated with arsenic. In the southwest, the rise in sea-levels, partly as a result of climate change, is making fresh water salty. People often have to walk for up to 24 hours to collect water to drink.
And when water’s not on tap, as it is for most of us in the developed world, it’s women and children who suffer the most. They spend hours carrying heavy pots of water to their families. Lack of water can also lead to family disputes, with women and children bearing the brunt of their husbands’ or fathers’ short tempers at the end of a day’s labour, and risking abuse. Women also have no economic independence as their lives are spent collecting water. And they end up caring for family members who become sick through drinking dirty water. Children lose out on education because they have to spend long periods fetching water.
Rekha has voiced this injustice and given hope to the whole village. Salt water has replaced most of the fresh water sources in her village. But she believes there is a solution to this problem, and the lack of basic human rights in the coastal region of Bangladesh where she lives. Rekha believes that it’s through communities – and especially women – finding their voices that change can be instigated.
Christian Aid partner The Bangladesh Centre for Advanced Studies has set up pani parishads in villages throughout Bangladesh. These community organisations discuss and agree the best water supply solutions for their particular villages. The water councils also provide a forum for addressing other community issues. Now that the village has clean water, the pani parishad is working to establish schools, as well as looking at plans to reconstruct roads and take action to stop child marriage. The villagers now have the power to make their lives better.
And the pani parishads encourage women to take an active role. Each council must have more than 50 per cent female membership and the president must be female.
Rekha explains that: ‘In the pani parishad, we give training to help [people] understand what they need and then how to achieve it. But most importantly, they understand that they can do things for themselves.’
Rekha tells people that if they come together, they can achieve things that they couldn’t if they were alone. By giving up a couple of hours during Christian Aid Week, you are collecting so much more than money. Your gifts can mean water, rights and courage. By coming together, we can achieve amazing things.
A gift of just £0.50/€0.75 to Christian Aid would pay for one day’s gender training per person with BCAS to improve relationships in families and lessen the burden on women. £50/€75 would pay for the monthly salary of a community pani parishad coordinator, who helps women and the poor to discover their voice, understand their right to water, learn about health and hygiene, and begin to instigate change. Your gifts can help to give voice to a single woman or to a whole community.
Find out more about Christian Aid Week by visiting www.caweek.org
© Christian Aid December 2007
UK registered charity number 1105851
Company number 5171525
Republic of Ireland charity number CHY 6998
Christian Aid Week 11-17 May 08
Prayers and reflections for Christian Aid Week
Ever-present God,
Fill me with your Spirit,
And send me out to make a difference
To the voiceless; the powerless and
the poor.
Help me to know that
I stand with all who seek justice
And I go with the strength of your Spirit.
Take my prayers, my time and
my envelopes.
Use them with others’ to achieve
amazing things.
For the sake of your people,
And to the glory of your name.
Amen.
Lord Jesus, you were anointed to bring good news to those who felt no good news,
to proclaim freedom to those imprisoned by injustice,
and recover health and wholeness to all the world.
You took up the cause of the oppressed.
You proclaimed the year of the Lord’s favour.
At the heart of your ministry was action.
Remind us of the unlikely group of people you gathered around you to perform your work of love,
and empower us to bring your good news
so your kingdom will come and your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Amen
‘At the heart of the Christian gospel is an identification with all living beings, and a demonstration of a different way of transcending limits, not by rolling over them, but by embracing and transforming them. Jesus did not voluntarily seek out suffering and did not glorify it, but he chose to bear it rather than inflict it on others. The sign of the bread and the wine on the communion table are a reminder to us, a bit like the rainbow is for God, that apart from all living beings we have no life, that we are creature not creator, and that what is given, and given up in love, is never lost or wasted.’
From Sharing the Blessing, Kathy Galloway, SPCK/Christian Aid £8.99
Call 08700 787 788 to order a copy of this new Christian Aid publication.
‘As a woman, I now feel very good. I have learned to talk. I am confident. In my heart, I have weight. We used to gather water before in big pots, but I never used to put a net over them. We used to go to the toilet without wearing sandals. Now we wear them and we wash our hands with soap. Everyone in the family is happy because now we have good safe water for many months of the year.’ Minu Basar from Bangladesh who had to cross a wide and sometimes dangerous river and travel up to 10km to buy drinking water for her family. Since joining the village pani parishad (water council), she has learned how to safely gather and store rainwater. The pani parishads are supported by Christian Aid partner, Bangladesh Centre for Advanced Studies.
Ten things to know about Christian Aid
1 We believe in life before death – we are passionate about rooting out poverty.
2 We fund long-term development work, respond to emergencies, and challenge the unjust systems that make and keep people poor.
3 We are the official development agency of 41 church denominations in the UK and Ireland.
4 We help people of all faiths and none.
5 We believe in helping people to find their own lasting solutions to poverty.
6 We work through more than 600 partners – local organisations – in nearly 50 countries.
7 We challenge those with power to change things that have an adverse effect on poor communities, such as international trade rules and climate change.
8 We don’t give money to governments – we work directly with local organisations on the ground.
9 We spend money where it’s needed most. For each £1/€1.43 given in 2006/7, 83p/€1.19 was used for direct charitable expenditure. The remaining 17p/€0.24 was used to raise the next £1/€1.43.
10 You can find out more at www.caweek.org or www.christianaid.ie or by calling
0845 7000 300.
How your money helps transform poor communities
Emergencies – 30%
Long-term development – 40%
Campaigning, advocacy and education – 13%
Fundraising – 16%
Governance – 1%
© Christian Aid December 2007
UK registered charity number 1105851
Company number 5171525
Republic of Ireland charity number CHY 6998
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