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Christian Aid is a charity which helps poor people to improve their own lives through local organisations in 70 countries. It also works to combat the causes of poverty. It has no permanent staff overseas, but works through organisations set up and run by local people, which are best equipped to meet local needs. These partner organisations are regularly visited and monitored. Christian Aid does not give money to governments.
Christian Aid is not a missionary society. It is supported by many churches but it does not attempt to convert people to Christianity, nor does it help only Christians. It works with people of many beliefs and those who have no particular beliefs. What matters is that they are in need.
One of Christian Aids many partners is the Organisation of Rural Associations for Progress (ORAP) in Zimbabwe. Through a staff of community organisers it helps people set up programmes such as food production, water supply and income generation. One such program is the Vukanini vegetable-growing project in the village of Mahwange (Vukanini means ‘Get up’), set up in 1985. ORAP provided loans to buy equipment-hoes, shovels, wheelbarrows-and installed a pump to obtain water from a nearby dam. Members of the group cleared the land, put up fencing and did necessary building work, and now they grow tomatoes, chomolia (a kind of cabbage), rape, onions, carrots and maize. Everyone has a small bed of each and the produce is eaten or sold locally. Christian Aid has supported ORAP since 1988, and in 1994 made a grant of £45,000.
Another Zimbabwean organisation supported by Christian Aid is Christian Care, which is helping people recover after a devastating drought in 1992. It provides animals, tools and seeds, fertiliser and advice to help communities get back on their feet. Christian Aid has supported Christian care for more than 20 years. Since 1991 millions of pounds have been given to Christian Care for it’s drought relief and drought recovery programmes.
The range of Christian Aid activities is remarkable. It supports income-earning projects, community health programmes, technical training, assistance to churches, agricultural projects, emergency relief, human rights programmes, and education in the U.K. and Ireland.
Christian Aid is not a party political organisation, but we believe that it is our duty to address the cause of poverty, and many of these, such as debt and unfair trade practices, are political in origin. Poor countries need cash to develop their economies or to pay interest on their debts. So they borrow money. We all do it. Few people in our own country are without a mortgage, overdraft or credit card. Student loans are now a part of University life. Governments borrow money too: the USA owes more money than anyone else. But to obtain a loan from our high street banks, a third world country must agree to an International Monetary Fund or World Bank aid package, and this comes with strings attached. The strings are Structural Adjustment Programmes, or SAPs, which are supposed to knock poor economies into shape. But SAPs are not knocking countries into shape, they are knocking them out. A SAP is a set of measures intended to get a governments finances in order so that the economy will be more efficient and will grow. Typically a SAP will require a third world government to:
All of these have a drastic and immediate impact on the poorest people. Many can no longer get health care, send their children to school, feed their families, or afford much else either with rocketing prices. If the price of export crops falls (as poor countries all compete with each other, on the World Bank’s advice), farmers often can’t store or eat what they fail to sell. Small businesses fail and many more people migrate, homeless, to the cities.
For more than 50 years, the Sri Lanka government gave priority to raising the living standards of the poor, and it worked. Sri Lanka became known as a country where people lived longer, more children went to school, more people could read and write, and more people could get to health clinics, than in comparable countries. Then in 1977 came Structural Adjustment, opening the economy and cutting back on government spending. Yet there are now more poor Sri Lankans than then. Many peasant farmers find their incomes squeezed by structural adjustment, because the government has stopped subsidising fertiliser, and has cut back it’s crop-buying system and help with irrigation. It has also pushed up the interest rates farmers have to pay to borrow money, so many farmers fall into debt and the results can be devastating. The Rev. Rienzie Perera, General Secretary of the Sri Lankan National Christian Council — one of Christian Aids partners — reports that “Structural Adjustment has lead to widespread malnutrition, women skipping meals and feeling faint in the fields, children passing out in the school assembly.” Sri Lanka’s government spending on education and health — once a mark of pride — is now below the Asian average.
Christian Aid’s campaign, Who Runs The World has three main aims:
Christian Aid is active in helping with disaster relief, be the disasters natural or human in origin. It is particularly active at the moment in Rwanda. On the day this article is being written, 24th April, Christian Aid partners have sent five trucks with relief supplies to the camp where the recent massacre has taken place. Some weeks before the massacre Jenny Borden, Christian Aids Overseas Director, visited Rwanda and reported that the situation was profoundly depressing. Despite the immense difficulties of the situation she perceived a role for Christian Aid:
Just for Christian Aid to be there, giving some help, talking and listening … At the practical level, helping to provide extra housing, a hoe for everyone in the commune whether Hutu or Tutsi, returnee or resident; support for normalisation of education and health, all helps to lessen the causes for dispute and is a step towards peacemaking … If the international community is failing to unblock and release the funds it is pledging, we should be doing all we can to bring attention to this fact, but also all we can to mobilise resources and spend them well … Peace requires justice: we must go on pressing for support for the judicial process …
What can You do to support Christian Aid? Here are some ways in which you can help:
Please write for further information to Mrs Elizabeth East, North-East Regional Coordinator, Christian Aid Regional Office, Central Methodist Church, St. Saviourgate, York, YO1 2NQ. Telephone 01904 611771.
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Last modified: 25th November 2005
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