"Behind Every Number is a Name"

Wednesday May 3 2017

Ahead of Christian Aid Week 2017, Jackie Macadam explains why the charity is needed more than ever.

In the aftermath of the Second World War, thousands upon thousands of people across Europe were displaced. Many of them ended up in refugee camps: basic, unsanitary and sometimes as lawless as the places they were fleeing from.

For a generation of Christians, to stand by and watch their neighbours descend into this suffering was simply not acceptable. They shared Jesus’ outrage over injustice – wherever it happened and irrespective of who it was happening to – and decided to take positive action to get involved and change people’s situations for the better.

By the 1950s the organisation began to look beyond Europe and expanded their remit to support development work in newly independent nations in Africa and Asia, and respond to emergencies worldwide. They were involved in the creation of Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO) and providing grants for Palestinian, Chinese and Korean refugees.

They made sure that the public was aware of continuing problems in the world by organising the first Christian Aid Week in 1957, and by famously building a replica of a refugee camp in the church of St Martin in the Fields in London.

Since that first Christian Aid Week five decades ago, the little red envelope has dropped through literally tens of millions of letterboxes.

This year, Christian Aid Week will unite 20,000 churches across the country that come together to raise money and support their global neighbours who have found themselves driven out and in need of help.

While the majority of today’s refugees seek sanctuary in poor countries, in 2015 a million people crossed into Europe. With borders in Europe now closed, thousands of desperate refugees are finding themselves stranded in countries including Greece and Serbia – and in need of urgent help.

The 21st century has bought new challenges to Christian Aid. The ‘war on terror’, climate change and the increasing number of natural disasters, and the fact that almost half the world’s population live on less than £2 a day, mean the work is needed more than ever.

Sally Foster-Fulton took over last year as Head of Christian Aid in Scotland. It’s been an eye opener for her.

“Behind every number is a name. Behind every statistic is a story. The refugee catastrophe that has made 65 million people homeless (one in every 113 people on the planet!) threatens to overwhelm our sensibilities – throw us into ‘overload apathy’ – that paralysing feeling that we cannot do anything to change or challenge a crisis of such monumental scale, so we retreat into the safety of what we know and have. The complexities are too great, the numbers numbing.

“Christian Aid began over 70 years ago, as a response from churches in the UK to the monumental humanitarian crisis that spilled out after World War II, with refugees in desperate need. The complexities and challenges were daunting, but because so many dared to believe things didn’t have to be that way, and then worked and walked together as the body of Christ, thousands of lives were saved and changed.

“During my time at Christian Aid, I have seen the power of people determined to push back against overload apathy. The challenges are enormous, but that cannot deter us, only make us more determined. Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple said, ‘The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.’

"Our Christian faith is based on the radical welcome and love of God, a love we are called to embody. The vast majority of refugees are displaced within their own borders or forced to flee to neighbouring countries who are least equipped to cope. Europe and the UK take in a minute fraction, and we should and can do so much more. Those who come to live amongst us bring their stories, their talents and experiences and needs. We can offer that radical welcome of Christ – and move from apathy to action.”

Even after all this time, the world isn’t getting any ‘fairer’.

Parents are selling their daughters in marriage to earn the money so the family can survive a drought in Afghanistan. Life expectancy for women in Zimbabwe is now 34 years old – it was 65 just a decade ago. The income of some multinational companies exceeds that of entire countries.

That Christian Aid is still needed, and working hard across the world, even after all these years, is a sad commentary on the modern world.

Christian Aid Week website

Refugee's story turned into Christian Aid Film