Happy New Year!

2009 has been a busy year for SCIAF. Thanks to your support, we have worked alongside local partners in 16 countries across Africa, Asia and Latin America, helping hundreds of thousands of the world’s poorest people on the path to a better life.

We also responded to emergencies in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Haiti, China, India, Sudan, Zimbabwe, Cambodia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Samoa and East Africa, helping communities recover from conflict and natural disasters.

Here in Scotland, we visited hundreds of schools and parishes to talk about our work and thanks them for their support. Schools and parishes across the country held sponsored walks and runs, coffee mornings, cake sales, fetes, quiz nights, dances, discos and fashion shows to raise hundreds of thousands of pounds to help SCIAF.

We also welcomed partners from overseas and worked to combat the root causes of global poverty and injustice. Over 2,300 people filled in campaign postcards or online e.actions calling for an end to sexual violence in the DRC and over 6,000 campaigners from across Scotland took action to call for Climate Justice.

January

SCIAF joined forces with 170 Catholic charities from around the world to launch a global climate change campaign. We asked supporters to call on Gordon Brown to take tough action on climate change. People from across Scotland also raised over £85,000 to help communities affected by fighting in the DRC. And SCIAF’s Chief Executive, Paul Chitnis, and Cardinal O’Brien also visited survivors of Cyclone Nargis in Burma to see how donations from the Scottish public were helping communities to recover and rebuild.

Famous singers, sports stars, entertainers and politicians helped launch SCIAF’s WEE BOX, BIG Change Lent campaign. Thousands of you gave something up for Lent and filled a SCIAF WEE BOX or donated through your school or parish to help us raise over £850,000 to combat global poverty – and the money is still coming in.

Climate change expert, Dr Ricardo Navaro from SCIAF’s partner, Friends of the Earth El Salvador, toured schools and parishes across the country and spoke at the Scottish Parliament about how climate change is affecting communities in El Salvador. And the Scottish Government gave SCIAF £50,000 in emergency funding to help thousands of people displaced by conflict in the DRC.

March

SCIAF staff and volunteers spoke at over 50 parishes across Scotland about our WEE BOX, BIG Change campaign and thanked parishioners for their support. We also helped to organise the Need to Lead exhibition at the Scottish Parliament which included photographs and personal accounts demonstrating the impact of climate change on SCIAF projects in Ethiopia and Zambia.

Hundreds of people bought SCIAF Real Gifts to celebrate Easter and help people living in poverty. Supporters also flocked to the Scottish Parliament for a rally, organised with help from SCIAF, calling on MSPs to vote in favour of a strong Scottish Climate Change Bill. And SCIAF gave a £25,000 emergency rescue package to Zimbabwe to help with the cholera epidemic which was sweeping the country.

May

SCIAF’s Africa Programme Manager, Deborah Livingston, travelled to Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo to call for UK government officials to take steps to help end sexual violence in the country.

Glasgow’s Lord Provost, Robert Winter, visited SCIAF’s offices to learn more about our work in Africa, Asia and Latin America. He met pupils from ten Glasgow schools which are working together on fair trade. By the end of June, SCIAF had visited 172 schools across Scotland.

The Scottish Government also unanimously agreed to pass the Scottish Climate Change Bill – the world’s most ambitious climate change laws. Thousands of SCIAF supporters helped make this happen by signing campaign postcards, writing to and visiting their MSPs and in a last-minute push, sending hundreds of emails to Scottish Labour leader, Ian Gray, urging him to help secure strong and binding climate legislation.

The UK government awarded a grant of £475,000 to SCIAF’s partner, the Sudanese Evangelical Mission in Southern Sudan. The money will be used to over the next five years to help improve the lives of people with disabilities. SCIAF also received 1.5 million euros from the European Commission to fund our work on sexual and gender based violence in the DRC, Rwanda and Burundi.

SCIAF staff and volunteers went to Scotland’s biggest music festival, T in the Park, to spread the word about the impacts of climate change on people in developing countries. Over 500 festival goers signed Climate Justice campaign postcards.

August

A painting by Scottish artist, John Bellany, which featured on First Minister Alex Salmond’s 2008 Christmas card, went under the hammer at an Edinburgh auction house, raising £2,500 for SCIAF. The £10,000 proceeds were shared equally between four Scottish charities. The Scottish government also awarded SCIAF a grant of over £560,000 to fund a study tour of sustainable farming practices in Zambia, Malawi, Kenya and Burundi.

September

Cardinal O’Brien and SCIAF’s Paul Chitnis led a CIDSE Climate Justice delegation to UN talks in New York. SCIAF also presented the stunning film, HOME to audiences in Glasgow and Edinburgh as part of the Take One: Action! film festival. Each screening was followed by panel discussion and audience question and answer session. Guest speaker, Frew Teshome, from SCIAF’s office in Ethiopia, gave a real insight into the impacts of climate change in his home country.

SCIAF pledged £50,000 in emergency aid to help thousands of people who lost their homes following a series of natural disasters in Indonesia, the Philippines, Cambodia and Samoa.

We also handed over thousands of Climate Justice campaign postcards, signed by people from across Scotland, to Prime Minister Gordon Brown, and hosted a lecture by Andrew Mitchell, Shadow Secretary for International Development, at the University of Glasgow. SCIAF partners from Colombia spoke to a packed audience at the university about human rights abuses in the country, and Monsignor Hector Fabio also spoke to pupils in Edinburgh about Caritas Colombia’s work.

Sister Rosemary Nyirumbe from SCIAF’s partner St Monica’s in Northern Uganda visited schools and parishes across Scotland to explain how your support is helping to transform the lives of former child soldiers, abducted during the Ugandan civil war. She was a guest speaker at the People’s G20 in St Andrew’s, which saw thousands of supporters flock to the seaside town to call on the world’s financial leaders to put people, and the planet, before profit.

Soap stars Libby McArthur and Dierdrie Davis from River City, helped to launch SCIAF’s life-changing Christmas Real Gifts and SCIAF’s Paul Chitnis visited El Salvador for a memorial service to mark the 20th anniversary of the deaths of the Jesuit Martyrs. SCIAF also launched an emergency appeal to help people facing a growing food crisis in Ethiopia and travelled to UN climate negotiations in Barcelona to co-host a presentation urging other countries to follow Scotland’s example and set ambitious climate laws.

December

Over the course of the year, SCIAF visited around 230 schools across Scotland to talk about our work and thank staff and pupils for their generosity. Well-wishers from across the country donated to SCIAF’s Christmas Appeal and wrote messages and prayers of peace, which will be sent to the people of Rwanda.

Hundreds of supporters travelled to Glasgow for The Wave – Scotland’s largest ever climate change march. Parishes across Scotland took part in an ecumenical bell ringing, calling for Climate Justice, and SCIAF staff were on the ground to monitor UN global climate change negotiations in the Danish capital, Copenhagen.

A big thank you to everyone who has supported SCIAF’s work over the last year. Together we have achieved great things and we wish you all a very happy New Year.