Christian Aid Week is an annual door-to-door fundraising drive by the charity Christian Aid. The drive is held each year in Britain during the second week of May, when thousands of volunteers post red collection envelopes to households around the country. Held each year since 1957 the event celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2007, making it Britain’s longest running fundraising week.
Christian Aid works with 700 local organisations across 50 developing countries. Working with poor communities, it trains people to deal with the effects of climate change and prepares them for the threat of natural disasters. These local organisations – or ‘partners’ – also work on HIV, training and education, health and sanitation and peace and reconciliation.
In 2007 the organisation encouraged people to plant trees in support of its overseas work on climate change projects. The charity aimed to raise £15.5 million from the annual fundraising week in 2007, and approximately 300,000 volunteers across the United Kingdom posted the well known red envelopes through millions of letterboxes.
Read more about Christian Aid Week: History
Famous quotes containing the words christian, aid and/or week:
“It is my desire, in the office of a Christian minister, to do nothing which I cannot do with my whole heart. Having said this, I have said all.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
““A man,” said Oliver Cromwell, “never rises so high as when he knows not whither he is going.” Dreams and drunkenness, the use of opium and alcohol are the semblance and counterfeit of this oracular genius, and hence their dangerous attraction for men. For the like reason they ask the aid of wild passions, as in gaming and war, to ape in some manner these flames and generosities of the heart.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, and make a beaten track for ourselves. I had not lived there a week before my feet wore a path from my door to the pond-side; and though it is five or six years since I trod it, it is still quite distinct. It is true, I fear, that others may have fallen into it, and so helped to keep it open.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)