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Time for a Big Shift away from fossil fuels

This April – the month of Earth Day – we’re calling on our supporters to take a stand and help fight climate change.

The UK’s big banks are using their customers’ money – potentially your money – to invest in and fund fossil fuels.

We know that Christian Aid supporters like you care about the world we live in. So, together, we want to send a message to the banks, telling them to stop investing their customers’ money in dirty energy and to shift their investment to support renewable energy instead.

It only takes one email for you to become part of The Big Shift – and we’ve already written it for you. To tell the banks that things need to change, all you need to do is add your signature and hit send…

Join The Big Shift today!

Burkina Faso is one of the world’s poorest countries, where a staggering 86% of children are malnourished. But your generosity is helping us reach vulnerable families – before more lives are lost.

In the run-up to Christmas, it’s particularly painful to think of children going hungry and becoming malnourished. Yet that’s exactly what’s happening across Burkina Faso – where a series of extreme droughts and floods have devastated rural farming communities and made it incredibly hard to scratch a living from the soil.

Salamata and her husband moved to the Ivory Coast in search of a better life. But even there, they found it almost impossible to grow crops, earn a living and feed their young triplets.

To make matters even worse, Salamata struggled to breastfeed and the triplets grew weak and sickly.

It was the generosity of people like you that allowed us to help – and we can’t thank you enough for that.

With the help of you and your fellow supporters, we run an amazing project in Salamata’s home town, where we teach local mothers how to ensure their families get the best nutrition possible.

We showed Salamata how to make a special type of porridge, rich in nutrients, which has become a family staple – keeping her children well-fed and helping them to grow stronger and healthier.

She told us: 'You have really helped me. My children had no appetite before but now they are healthier. Now I don’t worry about their health.'

It’s a wonderful thing to hear and hopefully it makes you feel proud.

Your kindness is what helps us run our life-saving, life-changing projects in places like Burkina Faso. So please keep up your support – we really do appreciate it.

Share Salamata’s story on Facebook or Twitter.

A little Christmas thank you…

You’re helping mothers like Salamata cook nutritious meals for their children, so we thought you might appreciate a little inspiration for your own Christmas table.

Our special seasonal recipes are a great way of using up leftovers and making the most of your festive fare. And they come with our very best wishes for a happy, healthy Christmas!

Three months on from the horrific mudslide in Sierra Leone, hundreds of families are still homeless and we’re still hard at work – thanks to the amazing generosity of people like you.

On 14 August this year, heavy downpours caused a devastating landslide on the outskirts of Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone. Rocks, earth and mud rained down on homes, several communities were left entirely submerged and 1,000 people were killed – including more than 120 children.

It was an appalling tragedy, particularly in this desperately poor country, still reeling from its recent Ebola epidemic.

But thanks to you, we were able to help vulnerable families, fast.

In the immediate aftermath of the mudslide, we worked round the clock, providing emergency supplies to those caught up in the crisis. And in the weeks and months that followed, we kept on working – supporting some of the 3,000 people who’d been made homeless overnight.

Many of these families were sheltering in schools, community halls, churches, mosques and other public buildings across Freetown.

They’d lost everything – their homes, livelihoods and, for many, even their loved ones. And so we did everything we could to help these families stay alive and start to slowly rebuild their lives.

Right now, you’re helping vulnerable children return to school.

Your generosity is helping us buy school bags, uniforms and exercise books for children who lost their homes and belongings in the mudslide. We’re also determined to restock teaching materials at local schools and provide hand soap and other hygiene essentials to reduce the risk of waterborne diseases.

For schoolchildren in Freetown, your kindness means the world and helps them look forward to a healthier, happier future.

So from them – and everyone on our team in Sierra Leone – we’d like to say an enormous thank you.

Share this story on Facebook or Twitter.

Friday 13 October is the International Day for Disaster Reduction. So this month seems a fitting time to remember how you’re helping communities worldwide to stay safe and avoid disaster.

The International Day for Disaster Reduction was set up in 1989 by the United Nations General Assembly. Like them, we believe that ‘prevention is better than cure’ when it comes to disasters. And that’s why we do everything we can to protect families in vulnerable communities – before the worst comes to the worst.

But we simply couldn’t do this without the help of generous supporters like you. Your kindness is what puts us on the ground in disaster-prone regions, helps us minimise risks and allows us to keep many thousands of families safe from harm.

So today, we’d like to say a huge thank you, on behalf of mothers like Feroza.

Feroza lives with her three children near the Brahmaputra River in Bangladesh. This river gives local farmers plenty of water for their crops and livestock. But it also floods often – and when it does, the raging current sweeps away everything in its path.

Plenty of Feroza’s neighbours have stories to tell. Stories of crops uprooted, homes flattened and children lost in the treacherous floodwaters.

Yet these days, Feroza feels safe – thanks to you and your fellow supporters.

With your help, we’ve raised Feroza’s home off the low-lying floodplain and onto safer and higher ground, which the waters never reach. On her new, safe plot of land, this hardworking mother is growing nutritious vegetables, breeding goats and ducks to sell at market and building a better life for her family.

With a smile, she told us: ‘I couldn’t imagine this kind of change could happen.’

And the only reason it can is thanks to your wonderful generosity.

You’re helping families like Feroza’s avert disaster, stay safe and move towards a better future. So thank you once again – we really do appreciate it.

Share Feroza’s story on Facebook or Twitter.

Syrian refugee children living in Lebanon are going back to school – thanks to Christian Aid supporters like you.

Christian Aid and our partners have been responding to the humanitarian crisis in Syria since 2012. And we’d like to share how one of our partners in Lebanon, Mouvement Social, is helping to support Syrian children whose lives have been torn apart by conflict.

Christian Aid is funding Mouvement Social to run a number of special schools so that the children can restart their education. Most have been out of school for months, if not years.

They’ve all been deeply affected by the horrors they lived through before fleeing Syria, so the psychological support they receive at the schools is vital, too.

The schools are safe places for the children to feel what they feel, express what they want to express, and be who they want to be.

Along with getting back to their studies, the children have art, dance and drama therapy to help them begin to heal – and to cope with the huge changes and pressures that come from being a refugee in a country where everything is strange and life is still very difficult.

For older students, the schools often also provide vocational training to help them find employment.

Many children are very shy at first. But, with time, they start to speak more – and then become eager to participate. With your support, we’ll fund more projects to support children who have experienced unimaginable horrors, and whose worlds have been turned upside down by war.

It’s good to share positive news. Together, we really can reach out and help refugees – share this story with your friends on Facebook or Twitter now.

Having a roof over your head is a basic human need. That’s one reason why money spent before a disaster strikes is money very well spent.

Remember the earthquake that struck Haiti seven years ago? The disaster killed over 50,000 people, and left hundreds of thousands of survivors without homes.

Already the poorest country in the western hemisphere, the recovery process for Haiti was never going to be simple. And just under a year ago, in October 2016, the people of Haiti were hit yet again – this time by a hurricane.

Hurricane Matthew flattened crops, killed cattle, wrecked fishing boats and contaminated water. And it destroyed many people’s homes.

Yet the 700 new, well-built homes we’d helped people construct in southern Haiti survived the disaster.

And, not only that, in the hurricane’s wake the new homes doubled up as emergency shelters for others who no longer had a safe place to call home.

Thanks to Christian Aid supporters like you, people in Haiti were better prepared in a number of ways to meet and withstand an emergency situation.

For example, before Hurricane Matthew hit, our local partners in Haiti helped evacuate people to shelters and made sure the shelters were stocked with food.

Every £1 we spend helping communities prepare for disasters can save up to £7 in emergency response costs.

It’s clear that, in countries like Haiti, money spent on strengthening people’s ability to survive and recover from a disaster is money well spent.

Funds are always needed. In Haiti alone, thousands of people still need permanent shelter. We’re so grateful for your support – please keep giving to help people in Haiti and other countries come through disasters and get back on their feet more quickly.

Remember to share with your friends on Facebook or Twitter.

We want to get to know you better!

We value your support so much. Please would you answer 12 quick questions so that we can get to know you better?

As a thank you, we’re giving away an utterly delicious selection of fair trade chocolate, courtesy of our friends at Divine. We’ll be sending these bars of gorgeousness to the first ten lucky supporters to get back to us.

Answer and enter now

Thanks to your support, Christian Aid is helping struggling coffee farmers like Gustavo Adolfo Talavero get a better price for their beans.

Not so long ago, Gustavo, a small-scale coffee grower, found it extremely difficult to support his family in one of Nicaragua’s poorest regions. Despite the global thirst for coffee, he could barely make a living. His dream of building a school for the children in his community was just that: a dream.

But things are different now – because Gustavo no longer has to farm and sell his beans on his own. He’s part of a collective of 18 local coffee-farming cooperatives. It’s transformed his livelihood and life.

Called Soppexcca (pronounced so-pecks-ka), the collective helps farmers work together to produce good-quality coffee, market it effectively, and put funds back into their communities to help beat poverty.

Working together has the power to make dreams come true.

As well as helping Gustavo achieve a better price for his coffee, and lift his family out of poverty, funds from Soppexcca have helped his dream of building a school become a reality.

You can see him above, standing in front of it. It’s well-equipped and has two teachers and 110 pupils. Before the school was built, lessons were held in Gustavo’s front yard, which meant that the children got wet when it rained.

‘I did not have the opportunity to go to school and so I tell my children to study and do what I couldn’t,’ he explains. ‘I have fought for this for years.’

And it’s not just Gustavo and his community who are thriving.

Through Soppexcca, Christian Aid has been able to help more than 32,000 other small, local coffee growers in Nicaragua to develop their businesses.

Together, they’re now growing, processing and selling speciality, fair trade and organic beans directly to buyers across the UK, the US and Japan.

Your gift today could help more farmers work together like this to beat poverty.

Thank you!

Share Gustavo’s story on Facebook or Twitter.

Time for a coffee break of your own?

As a thank you for your support to help communities lift themselves out of poverty, and to celebrate the International Day of Cooperatives this July, we’ve teamed up with Union Roasted to offer you a special discount on cooperative-grown coffee from Burundi.

To try it for yourself, just use the code SANGIRA15 to get 15% off a 200g bag of Sangira coffee when you order through the link below.

Sangira is a single-origin coffee, produced by the Dusangirumugambi Cooperatives of Burundi. These 404 smallholder farmer members joined together in 2013 to compete with bigger firms.

The name Sangira means ‘to share’, so please do share this offer with your family and friends, too!

www.unionroasted.com/sangira

This month marks six years of war in Syria – and the start of an ongoing refugee crisis.

The civil war in Syria is now in its sixth year, and the country is completely devastated. Since 2011, 18.5 million Syrians have been forced to leave their homes and their lives behind as they’ve fled the bombs and the fighting.

It’s estimated that more than six million children are in desperate need of basic humanitarian aid: food, clean drinking water and a safe place to live. And a whole generation is in danger of losing the chance of an education.

As well as the millions of families displaced within Syria, there are five million Syrian refugees living in surrounding countries. The number of families fleeing to refugee camps is still growing by the day – Christian Aid is working in two of the countries hosting many of these families.

In Lebanon, we’re running a project to counsel women and children who have been affected by their experiences of this horrific war – providing safe spaces for children to play and learn, while offering social and psychological support. And in Iraq we have three projects running to help refugees become self-sufficient in their new environments – teaching the skills needed to set up small businesses, and holding workshops to help families integrate into their host communities.

It’s thanks to your continued support that we can respond immediately to emergencies like the one in Syria and bring hope and support to families who have lost everything.

Did you know… Just five neighbouring countries are sheltering more than 4.8 million Syrian refugees – please click and share the stats below to help us

As we celebrate 60 years of Christian Aid Week, we need you more than ever

Christian Aid Week was formed in the aftermath of the Second World War. Its aim was to raise funds to help feed millions of European refugees left homeless and stranded by the devastation of conflict.

Six decades later, the need for your support and compassion is as critical as it was then, with the global migration of families fleeing the horrors of war now at epic proportions.

The work you enable us to do around the world is helping to transform lives and restore dignity to thousands of desperate families.

Nejebar (pictured above) fled Afghanistan with her family after the Taliban threatened to kill her husband Noor – he’d been working as a teacher for the government. When they arrived at a refugee camp in Greece, they thought it would be for a few days – that was six months ago, and there’s still no end in sight.

Nejebar explains that it was very painful for her family to leave their country, but it was the only way to ensure her children would be safe. ‘It is very peaceful here, and it is safe,’ she says. ‘We are sad because we are in a tent and our children are missing their education. But we still have hope that one day we will get out of here, and we have hope for our children’s future.’

It’s thanks to your generous donations – both during Christian Aid Week and throughout the year – that we can support vulnerable families like Nejebar’s. We were there 60 years ago when thousands desperately needed us, and we’re not going to turn our backs on the refugees who need us today.

Helping mums keep their families safe this Mother’s Day…

The statistics in South Sudan speak for themselves. Right now, 100,000 people face starvation, 1 million more are on the brink of famine and 2.4 million have been displaced. While this situation can seem overwhelming, it’s thanks to Christian Aid supporters like you that we are able to support people like Theresa (below) in a time of crisis.

When Theresa’s village was attacked, she fled to the bush with her family. They hid for five days, until hunger forced them to seek refuge at a camp for displaced people. The camp has now been their home for almost nine months.

“My only fear is that I will not have enough food for my family”

Thanks to kind supporters like you, Christian Aid partners helped the family back from the brink of starvation. Food vouchers, cooking tools, toiletries and more, all restored a level of dignity and normality. And the support also enabled Theresa’s 17-year-old daughter to go back to school.

Thanks to people like you, Theresa has found a refuge where she and her family feel safe.

“Once the situation is calm, I will go back to my village and rebuild my house”

This April, you could help us support more families suffering famine and displaced by conflict. Thank you.

Helping mums keep their families safe…

It would be easy, with the upsetting news reports we see every day, to forget about the good that is happening in the world.

But the gifts you send each month are making a real and lasting impact, by helping local people to protect others in their communities. We can’t thank you enough.

Forced to live on the floodplains of Bangladesh, families are at risk of losing everything to the flooding rivers. But ,thanks to Christian Aid supporters like you, we are working to help mothers like Feroza raise their families out of danger.

Feroza and her husband used to live in fear that the next flood would be the one that took everything from them – their home, their possessions, and even their children.

But, with the kind support of people like you, one of Christian Aid’s partners employed Feroza’s husband and a team of labourers from the community to build the family a 7ft earth plinth – lifting their home above the dangerous waters.

Feroza’s family was finally safe. With space to grow crops and tend to livestock, she could feed her family nutritious meals and help them thrive, as any mother would want.

Feroza no longer lives in fear, and it’s all thanks to people like you.

How your support is changing lives around the world…

It would be easy, with the upsetting news reports we see every day, to forget about the good that is happening in the world.

But the gifts you send each month are making a real and lasting impact, by helping local people to protect others in their communities. We can’t thank you enough.

Each month, your gifts are helping our global neighbours. Ezekiel Gwong (above), for example, is a community health agent in Nigeria who was trained thanks to our generous supporters like you. He’s determined to protect 185 more families in his local area from the deadly disease – and it’s an act of kindness his neighbours will never forget.

Kind supporters like you are also helping to rescue women who’ve experienced domestic violence in Brazil and keeping them safe at shelters run by other inspiring women. Your generosity might even have reached families who have been affected by natural disasters, such as the earthquake in Nepal, and helped them to keep their communities safe.

In fact, with just a few pounds each month, you are helping to change lives all around the world. And since the 7th February is Random Acts of Kindness Day, we thought this month was a perfect opportunity to celebrate the difference you’re making.

If you’d like to share your act of kindness on social media, just use the hashtag #ididsomething – and don’t be shy, because your generosity might just inspire someone else to start changing lives, too!

Your gifts are changing lives – through the humble TV soap opera!

Welcome to the small, fictional community of Loma Verde, where love is mixed with lies, violence, fear and a life-changing message.

Loma Verde is the country’s first rural soap opera and was developed by our partners in Nicaragua. While entertaining its thousands of fans, the soap touches on everything from sexual health and reproductive rights, to domestic violence.

Lead actress Elizabeth Torres, pictured above, brought her own experiences of gender-based violence to the role. Having lived with an abusive partner for more than eight years, Elizabeth told us it feels good to be able to help others who might be facing a similar situation.

Here’s a short clip from the life-changing show:

Your kind support helps to make projects like Loma Verde possible. Your regular gifts help us find and fund the most effective ways of tackling domestic and gender-based violence around the world – thank you so much.

Image credit: Fundacion Luciernaga

You’re lighting the way for families displaced by conflict

Twenty-five year-old Georgette from the Democratic Republic of Congo has been through unimaginable horrors.

Her country rarely makes the headlines but conflict has forced 1.7 million people from their homes – in the east, armed groups are battling for control, often using abductions and sexual violence to assert power.

Hearing of nearby attacks by armed militias, Georgette, along with her husband and four children, was planning to leave her village. But before she could do so, armed men came and took Georgette and her children captive.

The three older children managed to run away but with her young baby, Pierre, in her arms, Georgette was left at the mercy of her captors who held her, and raped her, for four days. She eventually escaped with Pierre when the men were distracted.

After days of desperate searching, Georgette found her older children staying with a kind family in a safer area, where her husband later joined them.

Too terrified to return home, Georgette’s family now faced the daunting task of starting over with no possessions, no home of their own and no money.

Fortunately, in the middle of this terrible trauma, Georgette found one of Christian Aid’s partner organisations who began to help heal her psychological scars. Georgette also received a grant so she could start buying and selling cassava flour to help support her family.

Thanks to the extra money she’s earning, Georgette’s older children are now back in school and her family’s future is looking brighter.

Your gifts help Christian Aid support women like Georgette, displaced by conflict around the world. Every month you are lighting their way out of terrible darkness towards a better future.

Thank you.

Please share this story so your friends and family can read about the inspiring work you’re making possible.

#_large #ChristianAid #DRC #Displaced #Conflict #Grant

Being prepared saves lives

Every year, natural disasters like floods, earthquakes and typhoons devastate vulnerable communities.

But, often, it’s not the power of nature that claims lives – it’s poverty.

#your support in action #Manila #Philippines #disaster preparedness

The promised land

Rui Barbosa, a 62-year-old farmer in Brazil, has just been granted rights to a small piece of land, where he can build a home of his own for the first time and run a small dairy farm.

#your support in action #Brazil #Land rights

You’ve helped us turn hope into action

Thanks to the support of wonderful people like you, Christian Aid has been changing lives for more than 70 years!

#your support in action #_large #refugees #voluntary services overseas #dec #fairtrade #divine chocolate #Ghana

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