Christian Aid’s CEO visits Ipswich

 

 

Speaking about the death of her brother Anthony she said, “Every single person is made in the image of God, and no-one is replaceable. We’ve all got something incredibly special. Also, life is short.”

 

Perhaps that was part of her motivation for her work, a job she glanced at in the Sunday paper and thought, “Wouldn’t that be a wonderful job for somebody.” Encouraged by her daughter to apply, she is now one year in to a job that “makes my heart soar . . .  to eradicate global poverty”.

 

Regularly meeting extreme poverty on her trips, she defines it as having no clean water, no loo, no shower, the children too hungry to go to school because they can’t manage the long day and the walk to get there. She gave an example of meeting Evelyn whose father is dying of cancer, and who is facing burial costs she cannot meet, but desperately “wanting to preserve myself” –  a woman caught in the impossible situation of having to choose between prostituting herself or not burying her father. “If Evelyn does not have her dignity then nor do I.”

 

Loretta spoke about the partnership model, where Christian Aid, rather than distributing largesse from afar, “walks with people” and in partnership with local organisations. It reflects a desire to see people lift themselves out of poverty, having given them the dignity to make choices for themselves, so that CA can move on, leaving support in the form of the local organisations.

 

She spoke also of the work in India, where the lowest caste, the dalits, work as manual scavengers to clean dry latrines without proper tools or protection. There was the story of the man who told his son he worked in a gold mine rather than confess the true horror of his job. This practice is illegal, and CA have fought for compensation and new livelihoods, stopping the work in 300 districts. There are 100 to go. “We are changing lives in the work we do”.

 

She described the unusual and controversial decision taken in Haiti last January after the earthquake, which was to give cash instead of food or tents to some survivors. She explained how £25 had allowed people in the rural areas to buy food from the market before it rotted uneaten, to rejuvenate the traders’ business, to take in and cook for refugees from Port Au Prince, to buy and sell and make profit; again how the dignity of choice was present in CA’s actions.

 

Speaking of the Nicaraguan coffee co-operative’s support from CA, she said that a more sophisticated business plan had enabled the co-operative to bring in far more funding from the government, allowing the further developments of good commercial practices, and the development of a sustainable community with hope for the future.

 

We also heard about CA’s advocacy work in Gaza, which Loretta described as “more or less on open prison”, with 1.6m people living in an area the size of the Isle of Wight, which a has a population of 140,200. 80% of the inhabitants are dependent on aid, unable to export and develop. CA have established clinics, play schemes for children growing up in a war zone, made farming land more productive, and all the while they work through government advocacy to move a political situation forwards.

 

Turning to CA’s strategy for the future, Loretta spoke about the changing nature of poverty, suggesting that 75%of the world’s poor people now live in middle income countries, such as the dalits in India, the Haitians in the Dominican Republic. And 75% of the world’s poorest are women and children. There is inequality in so many directions to be addressed.

 

There is a growing involvement with the private sector, to look at what businesses are doing, to get them to behave well in areas of tax, labour, sustainability, the environment; and to partner with decent businesses for sustainable change.

 

Lastly she urged us all to walk together, to give, act and pray collectively as we put our faith in action, to “help each other walk the mile and bear the load”. The reading from Isaiah in the opening worship sums it all up: “set the oppressed free . . . and the Lord will answer; . . . “Here I am.” (Isaiah 58:6-12).