Analyse and explain the work of one Christian agency working for world development

Alasdair Thomson

a) iii)

CAFOD (Catholic Agency for Overseas Development) are a Christian agency who works for world development. The National Board of Catholic Women who organised the first family fast day established CAFOD in 1961. It continued to develop and is now a major British charity.

CAFOD is a branch of Caritas Internationalis, which is a world-wide network of Catholic relief and development organisations. CAFOD focuses on England and Wales for funds and donations from the public and has regional organisers in those two countries. The regional organisers are the people who are given a district to oversee the fund raisings as well as to promote the work of CAFOD in that area.

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It works in partnership on over one thousand projects throughout the world. There are many different types of projects that they work on, requiring different types of aid. These include; long term development work, this means working with poor communities and launching programmes like; education, health care, safe water, agricultural help and the development of small businesses. An example of this is the alignment between the Diocese of Portsmouth and Bamenda in North Africa where aid has been given continually in the last twenty-five years. Analysis is another project that CAFOD works on, this means finding out why some countries are finding it hard to develop and campaigning for help for the developing countries. Aid is given to communities in need of immediate help, e.g. after a natural disaster. Finally CAFOD tries to educate people in England and Wales about world poverty and how it can be changed.

Some examples of projects that CAFOD works on are; help with AIDS and AIDS awareness in Africa. Rural development in Burkina Faso. Skills training in Kenya. Health care in Nigeria. Keeping democracy in South Africa and many other projects.

CAFOD gives various different “action packs” to people and parishes throughout England and Wales. These packs may include; ideas for fundraising, posters to promote the fund raising scheme, targets that are suggested for the amount of money to be raised, fact sheets, quizzes on world poverty and hunger, prayers and various other ways to educate a congregation and encourage them to give money to fund CAFOD’s projects.

One of CAFOD’s projects is to help Latin America in various ways; one such way is working for human rights. CAFOD are trying to ensure that the governments of Chile, Peru and Mexico pay attention to the poor and their needs. This includes campaigning for peace as war can lead to the neglect of the poor within a country. Members of CAFOD working in the are have been imprisoned and tortured in the past. However they have still managed to continue with a training programme, designed to teach people about their civil rights and so protect ancient Maya cultures and encourage peace.

This is an example of how CAFOD helps people without giving them things such as money or food but helps them with a problem that they have.