What is Concern Worldwide?

Concern Worldwide is an international, humanitarian organisation working to reduce poverty in the world’s poorest countries. Concern works with the very poorest people to help bring about long-lasting change in their lives. Together with local and international partners, and with poor people themselves, Concern helps people to access basic human rights like food, healthcare and education. Concern responds to emergency situations and undertakes long term development work. The organisation also works to promote a better understanding of extreme poverty and hunger around the world, and campaigns for action that will help to end them for good.

How Concern Worldwide works

Concern Worldwide works in three main ways:

1. Responding to emergencies

When emergencies strike, Concern provides urgent aid and support to communities affected. Concern provides assistance to people affected by natural disasters - floods, droughts and cyclones - and man-made disasters - including civil wars - working quickly and effectively to assess needs and provide life-saving items such as food, shelter, clean water and improved sanitation.

In Darfur Concern is providing essential help including shelter, cooking utensils and stoves, to vulnerable families living in camps. We are also starting to help thousands of families in neighboring Chad. We are providing plastic sheeting, blankets, mosquito nets, cooking pots and water containers to almost 200,000 people who have been forced from their homes.

2. Long term development programmes

Concern is also committed to finding lasting solutions to poverty through long term development programmes. As well as emergencies, Concern works in four other core areas which are vital in breaking the cycle of poverty: health and nutrition; Livelihoods (improving long term access to food and income for poor families); HIV and AIDS; and education.

Health and nutrition

Concern works to improve local health services, providing training and support to local health workers and ensuring supplies of basic medication reach the poorest and most vulnerable communities. One key aim is to try and reduce the number of children dying from diarrhoea and other preventable diseases every year. Helping communities to improve access to clean water is also a key part of Concern’s health programmes.

Concern also has nutrition programmes which provide therapeutic food and treatment to malnourished children. FoodAid supports Concern’s nutrition programmes around the world.

Livelihoods

Concern’s livelihoods programmes provide support to poor families to ensure they have long term access to a reliable source of food and income, enabling them to live active, healthy lives. Examples of livelihoods programmes include distributing seeds and tools to people so they can grow enough food to feed their families and sell some produce at market, and training women in small business skills so they are able to become petty traders and earn money to by food and other household essentials. 

Education

Concern is committed to improving access to high quality education in 14 countries in the developing world. In Mozambique, where only 45.2% of adults can read and over two thirds of teachers lack any formal teacher training, Concern is involved in constructing new schools, and improving the quality of teaching by establishing resource centres and improving access to training courses.

HIV and AIDS

Concern’s HIV and AIDS programmes include educating people on how the virus is transmitted to reduce the number of new infections, working with communities to address stigma and discrimination, and training local people in patient care, nutrition and counseling to ensure communities can care for those affected. The virus poses such great challenges that all Concern projects address its impact in some way.

3. Committement to Development Education and Advocacy

Some of the causes of poverty cannot be solved without the richer countries changing some of their economic and social policies. At present, Concern is involved in a number of advocacy campaigns to try and influence public opinion and policy makers. These include Unheard Voices, a campaign which is putting pressure on the UK government to increase its support to poor farmers in developing countries, the Stop Climate Chaos campaign and the Stop Child Labour campaign. Concern is also a member of MakePovertyHistory, a coalition of over 400 organisations working to commit world leaders to reduce debt, improve trade and increase aid for developing countries.

To find out more about Concern’s work log onto http://www.concern.net/