Christian Aid operates mainly through local organisations that know best how to tackle the poverty they see every day, respond during emergencies and challenge their governments.
The £39.9 million/€50.4 million we gave to more than 700 partners in 2007/08 made us one of the UK’s largest grant-making organisations.
Cibani-Das's story
Eighty per cent of the £82.5 million/€104 million we spent in 2007/08 went directly on our work to end poverty and injustice – so that people like 23-year-old Cibani-Das and her family can have the chance of a decent life.
‘Our income was so low it was difficult to buy things for [our daughter] Puja,’ says Cibani-Das who lives in Bramman Para village in Bangladesh.
Cibani-Das was given a neem tree by Christian Aid partner the Church of Bangladesh as a means of raising vital extra income for the family. She can now use the leaves to make an edible powder which also has important medicinal properties.
‘We had no means of income other than making and selling baskets,’ she says. ‘But the tree is an investment for the future.’
Emergency appeals
Grants to our partners made up 48% of the year’s total expenditure.
In 2007/08, we launched six new emergency appeals, to which you donated £5.54 million/€7 million, or £6.06 million/€7.7 million including Gift Aid.
The biggest emergency was when Cyclone Sidr hit south and south-western Bangladesh, killing more than 3,000 people and destroying half a million homes. But while it was an appalling tragedy, it highlighted the effectiveness of the increasing amount of work we do to prevent disasters.
Sixteen years previously in 1991, when a cyclone of similar intensity hit the same area, 138,000 people were killed. Afterwards we worked with local communities to develop disaster early warning systems, which were used to alert people that Cyclone Sidr was on the way.
Long-term investment
Nearly half of our spending funded long-term development. We support a huge range of local organisations – from the Movement of the Landless in Brazil, fighting for justice for people who are denied land that is rightfully theirs, to our partner the Centre Ecologique Albert Schweitzer in Burkina Faso which is using new solar technologies to create clean energy.
We support women’s councils in Afghanistan, human rights monitoring in the Gaza Strip and sustainable agriculture in Bangladesh.
But we know that change is about more than on-the-ground development. Change needs to happen at the top. That’s why we, alongside our partners, put pressure on governments and international institutions to make policies work for poor communities.
Campaigning
There’s no clearer example of the need to campaign than with the issue of climate change.
Innovation on the ground to protect people from the worst effects of global warming has to be matched by cuts in the carbon emissions that are responsible for causing the problem in the first place – lobbying governments can help make this happen.
Fifteen per cent of our expenditure this year went on education, advocacy and campaigning. We organised the Cut the Carbon march, involving nearly 75,000 people at some point in an 80-day, 1,000-mile trek across the country, the UK’s longest protest march.
We also worked with business on climate change, lobbied governments on international trade, justice on mining in Zambia and human rights in Angola. Our campaigners grew in number.
Find out how you can get involved
Fundraising
We spent £15.6 million/€19.7 million on fundraising in 2007/08, realising nearly £6 for every pound invested. The costs of the general running of the organisation, which we call governance, came to £0.7 million/€0.9 million.
This includes what we spend on our internal auditors, measuring our organisational impact, the costs of the board and director and other staff responsible for strategic management. It doesn’t include administration or fundraising and communications costs.
In 2007/08 we made grants of:
• £16.2 million/€20.5 million to organisations in Africa
• £15.6 million/€19.8 million to organisations in Asia and the Middle East
• £7 million/€8.8 million organisations in Latin America and the Caribbean
• £1.1 million/€1.4 million to UK, Irish and international organisations.
Full circle: a year's spending
