CAFOD QUESTIONS & ANSWERS
What does CAFOD stand for?
CAFOD stands for Catholic Agency for Overseas Development.
How many countries does CAFOD work in?
In 2003 CAFOD worked in 64 countries in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean.
The number of countries funded may vary slightly from year to year as emergencies occur and as new programmes begin or existing ones come to an end.
What does CAFOD do?
CAFOD raises funds from the Catholic community in England and Wales, the UK government and the general public.
CAFOD uses these funds to:
promote long-term development in some of the world’s poorest communities
respond to emergencies , helping people affected by conflict or natural disaster
raise awareness of the causes of poverty and help people campaign to bring about change
speak out on behalf of poor communities , challenging governments and international bodies to promote equality and justice
How much does CAFOD collect each year?
In 2002/03 the Catholic community, as individuals and through groups and parishes, contributed almost £20 million to CAFOD's work.
Together with over £10 million raised from governments, institutional donors and other aid agencies, the incredible generosity of CAFOD's supporters meant that income in 2002/03 was more than £30 million.
Who funds it?
CAFOD is funded mainly by the Catholic community in England and Wales, but also by the UK government’s Department for International Development, the European Union and by organisations such as Comic Relief, the Disasters Emergency Committee and other Catholic development and relief agencies.
Is CAFOD part of the Caritas International network?
Yes. CAFOD is the UK representative of the global Caritas network, a federation of 170 international Catholic aid agencies.
Visit www.caritas.org for further information.
Does CAFOD work closely with other charities such as Christian Aid?
CAFOD works in partnership with many other charities – through networks such as the Jubilee Debt Campaign, the Trade Justice Movement and the Disasters Emergency Committee.
In Britain and Ireland, CAFOD works especially closely with Catholic overseas charities, SCIAF in Scotland and Trocaire in Ireland (both Caritas members).
It also has a particularly strong relationship with Christian Aid.
Wherever it is possible and beneficial to collaborate with other organisations to achieve a common goal, CAFOD does so.
Why doesn’t CAFOD have charity shops like OXFAM does?
CAFOD has traditionally raised money from within the Catholic community from churches, schools and other Catholic institutions.
With the exception of one shop in Liverpool run entirely by volunteers, CAFOD does not reach the wider public through shops because they require much time and energy to organise.
Other fundraising methods have proved, on the whole, to be more effective for CAFOD.
How much does CAFOD spend on administration and generating funds?
At CAFOD, we are able to keep fundraising costs between 10 and 15 percent of our income, which is low compared to other agencies.
CAFOD spends 85 to 90 pence out of every £1 donated directly on our programmes to reduce global poverty and injustice.
What does CAFOD spend money on?
CAFOD spends the money on long-term development projects and programmes in Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, Eastern Europe and the Middle East, emergency responses to disasters, campaigning, public education and policy work and administering the charity’s work.
Does the money reach the people for whom it is intended?
CAFOD channels money through partner organisations that are committed to managing their funds efficiently and openly and to making sure that funds are spent well and for the purpose for which they were intended.
Monitoring and evaluating this work is as important to CAFOD and its partners as raising funds and implementing projects in the first place.
How does CAFOD decide which project or programme to fund?
CAFOD's programmes prioritise areas of work such as food, health care, HIV and AIDS, water, livelihood, education and social and economic rights.
Depending on which country it is, some of these priorities will be more urgent than others.
CAFOD develops priorities in dialogue with existing partners and on the basis of an analysis of the needs in each country and the ways CAFOD could most effectively help.
When CAFOD takes on a new project or programme and partner, an assessment is made with the partner covering the following points:
do the project’s aims and objectives fit with CAFOD's own?
are they, along with the project’s activities and proposed results, specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and have a deadline?
will the project encourage participation of those it helps and promote equality between men and women?
does the partner have enough staff, skills and resources etc to achieve what it has set out to do?
If the answer to each of these is yes and the relevant CAFOD committee approves the proposal, funding may be given.
Why does CAFOD spend up 10 per cent of its funds on education, campaigning and public policy work?
CAFOD believes not only in alleviating the immediate effects of poverty, but in dealing with the root causes of poverty.
This means influencing those with the power to change things through well-reasoned and researched argument, and through public pressure.
To this end, CAFOD believes that money spent on campaigning, education and policy work is as vital as that spent on providing water, healthcare, and livelihoods in poor communities – in fact, one of CAFOD's charitable objectives is education.
How many people work for CAFOD?
As part of a global network, CAFOD employs 220 people in England, Wales and in Nairobi, Addis Ababa and Harare.
CAFOD also has around 15 staff directly supporting the work of partners in West Africa, Burma, the Philippines and Chile.
Will CAFOD be able to report how the donation has been spent, for instance, if given by a parish?
CAFOD will not always be able to say with absolute certainty what a particular donation has been spent on.
Exceptions to this would include money raised for a specific emergency. If the donation has been made through Today, Tomorrow, Together, fundraising scheme with a regional focus, it would be possible to say that it has gone to a specific region.
What if my parish, school or local group wants to fund raise for a specific project or programme?
CAFOD would encourage community fund raisers to use a particular project as a focus for their fundraising and to see it as a good example of how their money may be spent rather than as the actual recipient of their money. CAFOD values highly the trust placed in it by supporters to find the best use of funds based on current needs.
What is Gift Aid?
Gift Aid is a system set up by the British government which means that, for every £1 you donate, CAFOD can claim an extra 28p from the Inland Revenue, helping your donation go further.
You can give Gift Aid donations to CAFOD in two ways :
by making a direct gift to CAFOD
by making a donation in your parish using Gift Aid collection envelopes
Are things really getting better in the Third World or worse?
Eradicating poverty is a global challenge, and one for which the international community has set targets.
While the task is huge (one quarter of the world’s population lives in severe poverty), progress is being made. According to the United Nations Development Programme :
the proportion of people living in poverty has fallen faster in the past 50 years than in the previous 500 years
since 1960 child death rates in developing countries have more than halved, malnutrition rates have declined by almost one third and the proportion of children not attending primary school has fallen by more than 50 per cent
over the past 30 years, the number of people in developing countries with access to safe water almost doubled, from 36 to 70 per cent.
What is poverty?
The poverty line is recognised by international organisations to be $2 per day – $1 per day for those in extreme poverty.
The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) estimated that in 1998, 1.3 billion people world-wide had consumption levels below $1 a day – 24% of the population of the developing world – and 2.8 billion lived on less than $2 a day.
UNDP stated in its 1998 Human Development Report “more than a lack of what is necessary for material well being, poverty can also mean the denial of opportunities and choices most basic to human development – to lead a long, healthy, creative life; to have a decent standard of living.”
This means that alleviating poverty is not just about providing the bare necessities but ensuring that people have “quality of life” too.
Why don’t the people in some of CAFOD pictures look really poor?
CAFOD's images try to reflect the reality of the lives of the people for whom it works.
They try to show the work being done, the people doing it and, where possible, the conditions in which those people live.
Sometimes people may not fit the “stereotype” of poverty that we may carry in our imagination because, like the rest of us, they wish to appear as dignified and positive as they possibly can.
Through the images it uses, CAFOD wants to challenge stereotypes and offer the people and communities being helped by its partners the chance to show themselves, not as downtrodden victims, but as active citizens who are doing their best to cope with sometimes immense hardship.
Source of national information contained on this page : http://www.cafod.org.uk
The owner of this page is Anne McKillop
