History
Oxfam Canada traces its history to 1963, when the British-based Oxford Committee for Famine Relief sought to establish a Canadian branch. Oxfam Canada was independently incorporated in 1966; the first Board of Directors included 21 distinguished Canadians.
In 1967, Oxfam Canada became a key organizer of the successful Miles for Millions fundraising walks across the country. In that year, Lester Pearson (then Canadian Prime Minister) led Oxfam's first Miles for Millions March. With its revenues, Oxfam began to provide educational materials to schools and undertake advocacy work in public policy development. This program was relaunched in 2009 as ‘Oxfam Canada Trailwalker’.
The early 1970s was a critical period of growth as Oxfam began its own programming overseas in Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and established a network of staff and volunteers across Canada to support its work.
During this same period, Oxfam Canada began to analyze its role in the development process, moving from a traditional model of charity (one-time grants) towards long-term development programming (working with communities to effect lasting positive change.)
Through the 1970s and '80s, Oxfam Canada sought to address the fundamental, underlying causes of poverty by deeply involving themselves in Central American solidarity and in the international movement against apartheid in South Africa.
This, in turn, led to Oxfam's role as a major advocacy organization in the 1990s, to mobilize public support for changing the policies that perpetuate poverty.
Today, Oxfam Canada works with over 100 partner organizations in developing countries, tackling the root causes of poverty and inequity and helping people to create self-reliant and sustainable communities. In Canada, Oxfam is active in education, policy advocacy and building a constituency of support for its work.
Oxfam Canada is a founding member of Oxfam International, the federation of Oxfams worldwide.
Read more about this topic: Oxfam Canada
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“He wrote in prison, not a History of the World, like Raleigh, but an American book which I think will live longer than that. I do not know of such words, uttered under such circumstances, and so copiously withal, in Roman or English or any history.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“Considered in its entirety, psychoanalysis won’t do. It’s an end product, moreover, like a dinosaur or a zeppelin; no better theory can ever be erected on its ruins, which will remain for ever one of the saddest and strangest of all landmarks in the history of twentieth-century thought.”
—Peter B. Medawar (1915–1987)