CWS and ACT Alliance

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Church World Service is a founding member of ACT Alliance, a coalition of more than 130 churches and church-based humanitarian organizations working together in humanitarian assistance and development around the world.

The alliance brings together approximately 30,000 staff and volunteers in 125 countries and a combined operating budget of nearly $1.5 billion each year. Working collaboratively, Alliance members are able to provide emergency food aid, shelter, water and implement long-term poverty reduction programs more efficiently in the world’s poorest countries. The members’ strong local roots enable the Alliance to provide locally-based knowledge, analysis and understanding in emergencies and disaster, and in development.

ACT Alliance members retain individual identities while working collaboratively. For example, nine individual agencies who are ACT members – already working in Haiti at the time of the devastating Jan. 12, 2010 earthquake – immediately began collaborating with each other, the U.N. and peer NGOs to respond to various aspects of the emergency. Six weeks later, ACT members were able to respond in the same collaborative way to the earthquake in Chile.

For more on the ACT Alliance, visit the ACT Alliance website.