Scope and content
The collection comprises correspondence, minutes and reports concerning aid projects
in Africa, Asia, Europe, Middle East, Latin America and the Caribbean; papers of the
Directorate including constitutional material, committee minutes of the British Council
of Churches, and Christian Aid Board papers; organisational material including correspondence
with other fund-raising bodies such as Oxfam, the Red Cross, and a selection of Christian
Aid publicity material including Annual Reports.
Record creators history
During the Second World War, British and Irish Churches founded an organisation called
Christian Reconstruction in Europe, which was a united effort to raise funds to aid
in the rebuilding of Europe when the War ended. They raised one million pounds through
collections, and began their work of refugee relief and resettlement. In 1948, this
work became part of the British Council of Churches, and was known as the Inter-Church
Aid and Refugee Service. Refugee relief continued to be a major issue for both national
and international organisations, and at the Second Assembly of the World Council of
Churches in 1954 it was acknowledged that the work of the Inter-Church Aid and Refugee
Service was of lasting value. Over the next decade the focus of their work was to
shift towards world-wide development issues.
In 1957, Janet Lacey, Director of the Inter-Church Aid and Refugee Service, decided
to hold a 'Christian Aid Week' to encourage wider public awareness and support. £26,000
was raised throughout Britain, and Christian Aid Week was to become an annual event.
In 1964, the agency changed its name to Christian Aid, to identify with this success.
Between 1960 and 1964, the 'Freedom from Hunger Campaign' focused aid on increasing
food production in the poorest regions of Africa, Asia, the Pacific, the Middle East
and the Caribbean. By 1970, the organisation was funding over 100 development projects
in 40 countries. It had also established the World Development Movement to address
the issues of poverty. Major projects in the 1970's included response to drought in
India and famine in East Pakistan and the Sudan. Christian Aid also helped to rebuild
communities after wars in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, and following the overthrow
of dictatorships in Uganda and Nicaragua. A global recession in the 1980s increased
poverty worldwide and Christian Aid began to campaign on issues of global justice.
It helped form the Southern Africa Coalition to end Apartheid and provided famine-stricken
Ethiopia with emergency supplies. In the 1990's, projects included emergency appeals
for the crises in Rwanda, Montserrat, Sierra Leone and the former Yugoslavia; highlighting
the problems of child prostitution in South-East Asia and child labour in Pakistan,
and campaigning for fair trade and an end to Third World debt. Today, Christian Aid
funds 700 local organisations in over 70 countries.
Christian Aid has no representatives overseas or projects of its own. It works entirely
through local structures, mainly churches or voluntary organisations, and relies on
regional screening of projects by experts. It also co-operates closely with the world-wide
network of Christian churches and Councils centred on the World Council of Churches
in Geneva. Christian Aid believes that this approach encourages the idea of partnership
and development in its own right. Although originally established for relief work,
Christian Aid believes that whatever aid comes from outside, long- term development
can only come from within a society.
Christian Aid is a registered charity and non-governmental organisation (NGO). Constitutionally,
it is a division of the British Council of Churches (BCC), which itself is composed
of delegates appointed by member churches and Christian bodies. Christian Aid's mandate
is to act as the overseas agency of these member churches and to provide concerted
action in the areas of relief and development. It is directly accountable to the Assembly
of the BCC, which also appoints Christian Aid's Director and Board.
The Board appoints Regional Committees, each responsible for making grants to programmes
and projects in the main regions: Africa; Asia and the Pacific; Latin America and
the Caribbean, and the Middle East. There is also a committee that makes grants to
projects in Europe and to global programmes operating in more than one of the main
regions.
Christian Aid is an ecumenical organisation. Although the Roman Catholic Church is
not a member of the British Council of Churches, there is a close association between
Christian Aid and the Catholic Fund for Overseas Development (CAFOD).
Fund-raising is largely through local congregations and groups whose denominations
are represented on the British Council of Churches, and also from the general public.
In the event of emergencies, where relief cannot be sought from local churches Christian
Aid is able to make money available through the International Red Cross, United Nations
agencies and other sources. In major emergencies, the five main overseas aid agencies
(Christian Aid, the British Red Cross, CAFOD, Oxfam and Save the Children Fund) are
able to make a television appeal to the nation as the United Kingdom Disasters Emergency
Committee. Both the BBC and ITV give their services free. In these combined appeals,
each agency receives one fifth of the total amount of money raised and sends money
and supplies through its own channels to the disaster area.
Christian Aid is notable for the number of other organisations it has helped found.
These include Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO) in 1958, the World Development Movement,
with allied churches, in 1969, and the Who Runs the World campaign, which became Jubilee
2000, in 1994. In addition, Christian Aid funded the establishment of New Internationalist
magazine in the 1970s, and co-founded the Fairtrade Foundation in the 1990s.
Accruals
Source of acquisition
Deposited on permanent loan from Christian Aid, in several deposits, from 1985.
System of arrangement
To date, five separate deposits have been made. The papers from the first and second
deposit follow the same organisational principles, and use a uniform referencing system.
Files are listed by regional area in the following order (with letter codes): Africa
(A), Asia/Pacific (C), Europe/UK (E), Global (F) and Middle East (H). Within each
region, papers are arranged according to individual countries. Papers relating to
organisation (I), directorate (D) and publications (J) are arranged as separate categories.
Papers from the third, forth and fifth deposits are also arranged by regional group,
but as follows: Africa and the Middle East (A), Asia/Pacific (C), and Latin America/Caribbean
(G).
Conditions governing access
Conditions governing reproduction
Rights to access and re-use digital objects:
Unknown
Copyright held by Christian Aid
Other finding aids
Unpublished handlists in 3 volumes: Christian Aid Archives I (first deposit), Christian
Aid Archives II (second deposit), Christian Aid Archives III (third deposit); printed
lists for fourth and fifth deposits.
Related material
SOAS Library also holds the records of the Inter-Church Aid and Refugee Service (forerunner
to Christian Aid) which are organised as a separate collection [Reference: ICA]. This
collection comprises the papers of Inter-Church Aid and its predecessor organisation
Christian Reconstruction in Europe. The ICA collection includes: constitutional papers;
minutes of the organisation's committees and sub-committees; correspondence files,
including those of the organisation's senior officers; and subject/regional files
relating to the organisation's appeals and campaigns; work on refugees; and relating
to Europe, Palestine and Africa.
Extent
510 boxes
Keywords
Subjects:
Refugees
Developing countries
Poverty alleviation
Hunger
Poverty
Drought
Nongovernmental organizations
Charity
Sustainable development
Christianity
Fair Trade
Disaster relief
Pressure groups
Religious charities
Development planning
Development aid
Charities
Humanitarian assistance
Food aid
Economic and social development
International voluntary services
International economic relations
Geographic names:
Caribbean
Eastern Asia
Central Africa
Central America
Eastern Africa
Eastern Europe
Middle East
Northern Africa
North America
South America
Oceania
Southern Asia
South Eastern Asia
Southern Africa
Western Africa
Europe
Algeria, Africa
Angola, Africa
Argentina, South America
Bangladesh, Asia
Belize, North America
Bolivia, South America
Botswana, Africa
Brazil, South America
Myanmar, Asia
Chile, South America
Colombia, South America
Dominican Republic, North America
Ecuador, South America
Egypt, Africa
El Salvador, North America
Ethiopia, Africa
Ghana, Africa
Greece, Europe
Guatemala, North America
Haiti, North America
Honduras, North America
Hong Kong, Asia
India, Asia
Indonesia, Asia
Kenya, Africa
Malawi, Africa
Nepal, Asia
Nicaragua, North America
Nigeria, Africa
Pakistan, Asia
Philippines, Asia
Sri Lanka, Asia
Tanzania, Africa
Uganda, Africa
United Kingdom, Europe
Zaire, Angola, Africa
Zambia, Africa
Language of the material
English Multiple languages
Record creator
Christian Aid
British Council of Churches; Inter-Church Aid and Refugee Service
Christian Reconstruction in Europe
Content provider
School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) Archives, University of London