With 75 years of experience in humanitarian action, CARE International holds that, poverty is caused by unequal power relations that result in an inequitable distribution of resources and opportunities between women and men, between power-holders and marginalized communities, and between countries. Care International, therefore, believes that poverty cannot be overcome without addressing these underlying power imbalances.

The NGO adopts a participatory approach by working with communities to understand the root causes of poverty. The aim is to find innovative and locally-responsive solutions to these problems faced by societies. CARE empowers communities to prepare and plan for emergencies, bringing together development and humanitarian programmes. It also supports communities to anticipate and adapt to shocks, manage growing risks and address underlying causes of vulnerability.

CARE International works within six impact areas toward the overall goal to end poverty. They include crisis response, the right to health, gender equality, the right to food, water, and nutrition, climate justice, and women’s economic justice. CARE focuses on these specific impact areas for two reasons. Firstly, because they are critical barriers to poverty reduction, and secondly because they are areas where the organization has developed expertise at all levels of its global network.

In 2020, CARE and its partners helped more than 33.8 million people to support women’s rights to sexual, reproductive, and maternal health. Again in 2022, it worked in 111 countries around the world, implementing 1,631 poverty-fighting development and humanitarian aid projects and initiatives to reach 174 million people directly. CARE also reached 157 million people indirectly through its advocacy, replication of successful programs, and scaling up of innovations.

Gender equality is at the heart of CARE’s work. For this reason, the organization’s programs aim to meet the different needs of women, men, girls, and boys. The longer-term goal is to achieve gender equality through the use of gender transformative approaches that seek to empower women and girls and engage men and boys.

REFERENCE

Information from https://www.care-international.org/what-we-do and https://healthcluster.who.int/partners/care-international was used in this story