Oxfam

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Oxfam International is a confederation of 13 independent, non-profit, secular, community-based aid and development organizations who work with local partners in over 100 countries worldwide to reduce poverty, suffering, and injustice. It is a member of the OneWorld Network, which seeks to "promote sustainable development, social justice, and human rights."

The 13 Oxfam organizations are based in: Australia, Belgium, Canada (along with a distinct Oxfam organization for the province of Quebec), France, Germany, Great Britain, Hong Kong, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Spain and the United States. A small Oxfam International secretariat is based in Oxford, UK, and the secretariat runs advocacy offices in Washington, D.C, New York, Brussels and Geneva.

Oxfam International was founded in 1995. Oxfam Great Britain is based in Oxford, UK. It was founded in England in 1942 as the Oxford Committee for Famine Relief by Canon Theodore Richard Milford (1896–1987) and the Oxford Meeting of the Quakers (which included Edith Pye and the Gilletts), with a mission to send food through the Allied blockade to the citizens of Nazi-occupied Greece. The first overseas branch of Oxfam was founded in Canada in 1963. The committee changed its name to its telegraph address, OXFAM, in 1965.

1 Shops
2 Funding
3 Fundraising
4 Oxfam's work
5 Criticism
6 See also
7 References
8 External links

[edit] Shops

Image:Oxfam shop on Drury Lane.jpg Oxfam opened the first charity shop in Britain in Broad Street, Oxford in 1948. Today it operates approximately 750 shops through Britain as well as a number in other countries. Over 70 of the organization's shops in the UK are specialist Oxfam bookshops, making them the largest retailer of second-hand books in the United Kingdom. Oxfam Canada sold off its Bridgehead fair trade business, which in 2000 became the Bridgehead Coffee chain which continues to promote fair trade coffee and related products.

Oxfam shops also sell fair trade products from developing communities around the world.

[edit] Funding

Oxfam has received funding from the Ford Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Minneapolis Foundation, the Public Welfare Foundation, and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. It has an annual operating budget of over $300 million USD.

[edit] Fundraising

Oxfam has a number of successful fundraising channels in addition to its shops. Over half a million people in the UK make a regular financial contribution towards its work, and vital funds are received from gifts left to the organization in people's wills. Many London Marathon competitors run to raise money for Oxfam, and Oxfam also receives funds in return for providing and organizing volunteer stewards at festivals such as Glastonbury. In conjunction with the Gurkha Welfare Trust, Oxfam also runs several Trailwalker events in Hong Kong, Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom.

[edit] Oxfam's work

Image:Oxfam clothing and shoe bank.jpg Though Oxfam's initial concern was the provision of food to relieve famine the charity has, over the years, developed strategies against the causes of famine. In addition to food and medicine Oxfam also provides tools to enable people to become self-supporting and opens markets of international trade where crafts and produce from poorer regions of the world can be sold at a fair price to benefit the producer.

Oxfam's program has three main points of focus: development work, which tries to lift communities out of poverty with long-term, sustainable solutions; humanitarian work, assisting those immediately affected by conflict and natural disasters (which often leads in to longer-term development work), especially in the field of water and sanitation; and lobbying, advocacy and popular campaigning, trying to affect policy decisions on the causes of conflict at local, national, and international levels.

Oxfam today works on these issues:

[edit] Criticism

On 26 October 2006, Oxfam accused Starbucks of asking the National Coffee Association to block a trademark application from Ethiopia for two of the country's coffee beans, Sidamo and Harar. They claim this could result in denying Ethiopian coffee farmers potential annual earnings of up to £47m. Starbucks denied initiating opposition to the trademark application and stated the NCA had actually expressed concerns to Starbucks, and not the other way around. Starbucks also went on record saying they do not oppose the Ethiopian government's patent application and on October 25 sent a letter to the Ethiopian government offering to support and help them develop and implement a certification program<ref>[1].</ref>

Robert Nelson, the head of the NCA, added that his organization initiated the opposition for economic reasons, "For the U.S. industry to exist, we must have an economically stable coffee industry in the producing world...This particular scheme is going to hurt the Ethiopian coffee farmers economically." The NCA claims the Ethiopian government was being badly advised and this move could price them out of the market.<ref>BBC News, Starbucks in Ethiopia coffee row, accessed 26 October 2006</ref>

Facing over 60,000 letters of concern, Starbucks placed pamphlets in its stores accusing Oxfam of "misleading behavior" and insisting that its "campaign need[s] to stop." On 7 November, The Economist derided Oxfam's "simplistic" stance and Ethiopia's "economically illiterate" government, arguing that Starbucks' (and Illy's) standards-based approach would ultimately benefit farmers more. <ref>Oxfam vs. Starbucks: And this time, Oxfam may be wrong</ref>