History
In 1945 the British and Irish churches establish the Christian Reconstruction in Europe. Its purpose is to raise funds for the resettlement of some of the millions of people left homeless by the war.
In 1948, it was renamed the Inter-Church Aid and Refugee Service, and became part of the British Council of Churches. During the next decade, the organisation began to move into worldwide development work. The overriding theme was the promotion of self-reliance.
In 1957, Janet Lacey, the organisation’s then director, decided to hold a “Christian Aid Week” to encourage public awareness. This first event mobilised residents in 200 towns and villages across Britain, collecting £26,000 for overseas development work.
In 1964 the agency changed its name to Christian Aid. During the 1960s, the threat of hunger, even famine, made agricultural development a priority in the poorest regions of the world, especially Africa and Asia. As well as overseas aid, Christian Aid began to tell Church supporters and schools about the causes of poverty and helped establish the World Development Movement.
Read more about this topic: Christian Aid Week
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Classes struggle, some classes triumph, others are eliminated. Such is history; such is the history of civilization for thousands of years.”
—Mao Zedong (1893–1976)
“You treat world history as a mathematician does mathematics, in which nothing but laws and formulas exist, no reality, no good and evil, no time, no yesterday, no tomorrow, nothing but an eternal, shallow, mathematical present.”
—Hermann Hesse (1877–1962)