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How do you mark an 80th birthday? 80 years means you’ve seen: the immediate post- war years and the rebuilding in Europe; the birth of the NHS; the civil rights movement; the women’s lib movement; the rise of the environmental movement; the end of apartheid in South Africa; the founding of fair trade; global protests to drop the debt of impoverished nations; global protests for climate justice; and women taking positions of leadership.
All of these things have been hard won – won because people have believed passionately in justice and have stood up and protested when power imbalances benefitted the few over the many.
But those same 80 years have also seen untold hardships – famine, drought, conflict, slaughter, oppression, occupation, violence, fear, hunger, destruction and unbridled greed and corruption. It sometimes feels like two steps forwards and one step back.
Christian Aid turns 80 this year and we will be out across Scotland marking the anniversary, asking churches to plant trees of hope, and to thank people for their unwavering commitment to building a better world for all God’s people.
We couldn’t do what we do without our supporters, our churches and our partners. Rev Douglas Lister, a Church of Scotland minister who served in both Largo and Inverurie began the movement that is now Christian Aid because he saw the suffering of the German and European refugees at the end of the Second World War.
He asked war-weary people to give generously and unconditionally to those who needed support. That witness from the churches has continued over the 80 years, offering hope to those who need it, whilst also demanding that leaders can and must do better.
Conflict and climate continue to dominate our work and we are grateful to the Scottish government for two separate lots of funding to support our partners. In Zimbabwe, climate has made hunger ever more prevalent and so cash grants enable people to provide food for their families and keep children in school.
And in South Sudan, the money supports the work our partners are doing with refugees, offering cash grants so that people who come to the camps with nothing, can afford life’s essentials.
Our work sustains hope. But hope should not be equated with optimism, because it is something much more profound. Hope is rooted in faith, faith in a God of justice. But hope should be a verb, because it demands action – steps to actively pursue peace and justice and to build a better world for everyone. And sometimes that means accepting the two steps forward and one step back as we wrestle with vested power and interest.
As we mark our 80th year, we are marking the unstoppable power of hope and ask you to join us on the next leg of the journey.
Val Brown
