Christian aid: The History

For more than 60 years, Christian Aid has fought poverty, strengthened the poor, and turned hope into action.

-1940s

In the aftermath of World War II, British and Irish church leaders met, determined to do everything possible to help European refugees who had lost everything.
The name they gave themselves was Christian Reconstruction in Europe. Their purpose was not to evangelise, but to alleviate suffering for ordinary people, no matter what their faith.
Christian Reconstruction in Europe became a department of the British Council of Churches, and was eventually renamed the Department of Interchurch Aid and Refugee Service. In a decade, it raised £29,000.

-1970s

Severe famines in Pakistan, Sudan and Ethiopia in the 1970s prompted a huge rise in public support for aid. However, it was becoming obvious that emergency relief wasn’t enough. What starving people needed was a genuine solution, not hand-outs.

We saw that it was not just an act of nature that made people poor, but political and economic decisions. Alongside traditional relief and development, we started to consider how to work for people’s rights.

We worked in the world’s hotspots: in Vietnam and Laos, destroyed by war; in Uganda after the overthrow of Idi Amin; in Nicaragua after the toppling of the dictator Somoza; and in Kampuchea (present-day Cambodia) after the fall of Pol Pot.
By now we were working in 40 countries, funding more than 100 long-term development projects.

-1990s

In the 1990s Christian Aid became one of the first aid agencies to highlight ‘unsexy’ and complex global economic issues.
Our celebrated Banking on the Poor campaign alerted people to the need to cancel Third World debt, while the culpability of the World Trade Organisation and International Monetary Fund was exposed in our Who Runs the World? campaign.

We were not afraid to confront governments and challenge the rules of the day that said charities should be apolitical. This resolve helped change government trade policy and establish the Fairtrade Foundation - our campaigning works. Christian Aid was also quick to respond to humanitarian crises in Rwanda, the Middle East and, at the end of the decade, working across ethnic and religious divides in Serbia, Bosnia and Kosovo.

We also ran an enormously successful supermarket campaign, when hundreds of thousands of supporters handed in their till receipts to demand that their supermarkets use decent labour standards. Clare Short, then Secretary of State for International Development, appeared on the front page of the Independent, standing next to a giant lobster and bunch of grapes, at the launch of the campaign.

As we neared the new millennium, we were able to announce that world leaders had promised to deliver $100 billion in debt relief after our intense campaigning as part of the Jubilee 2000 coalition.

-2000s

The 21st century has bought new challenges to Christian Aid. The so-called war on terror, climate change and the increasing number of natural disasters, and the fact that almost half the world’s population live on less than US$2 a day, mean our work is needed more than ever.

In 2007 our annual income was £86.5 million and we now work with more than 650 overseas partners in around 50 countries. We are putting into practice our aim of turning hope into action.
But 60 years on from our founding, the fact that we’re still here isn’t a victory.

The world isn’t getting any fairer. Children in Gaza are going to schools pockmarked with bullet holes. Parents are selling their daughters in marriage to earn the money so the family can survive a drought in Afghanistan. Life expectancy for women in Zimbabwe is now 34 years old – it was 65 just a decade ago. The income of some multinational companies exceeds that of entire countries.

So we won’t stop now. We’ll carry on tackling the causes of poverty. We’ll continue to support local organisations to deliver real, practical change. We’ll work so that everyone can fulfill their right to a decent life.