US foreign assistance accounted for a significant portion of CWS’s budget last year. The gap in this funding will be catastrophic for the vulnerable communities we serve. Your donations are the only way we can continue to continue our life saving work.
Any pause in resettlement slowly chips away at the infrastructure and processes that are necessary to effectively provide safety to people in dire situations. Your donations enable us to do as much as we can, as well as we can for as long as we can – by keeping the infrastructure in place despite the government stepping out.
Refugees who arrive in the U.S. are promised services in their first 90 days in country. Without your donations, we cannot fulfill those obligations. These actions jeopardize the quality of, duration of, and access to key integration services. They place recently resettled refugees across the country – those who after years of waiting amid lengthy screening and vetting processes have finally found a safe place to call home – at risk of extreme economic insecurity and homelessness. Your donations bridge the gap.
US foreign assistance accounted a significant portion of CWS’s budget last year. The gap in this funding will be catastrophic for the vulnerable communities we serve. Your donations are the only way we can continue to continue our life saving work.
Any pause in resettlement slowly chips away at the infrastructure and processes that are necessary to effectively provide safety to people in dire situations. Your donations enable us to do as much as we can, as well as we can for as long as we can – by keeping the infrastructure in place despite the government stepping out.
Refugees who arrive in the U.S. are promised services in their first 90 days in country. Without your donations, we cannot fulfill those obligations. These actions jeopardize the quality of, duration of, and access to key integration services. They place recently resettled refugees across the country – those who after years of waiting amid lengthy screening and vetting processes have finally found a safe place to call home – at risk of extreme economic insecurity and homelessness. Your donations bridge the gap.
Financial Accountability
Church World Service is committed to transparency and makes available a range of information related to our governance, our finances and our relationship with partner organizations. If you don’t see what you’re looking for here, we hope you’ll contact us.
The CWS Mission
Church World Service is a faith-based organization transforming communities around the globe through just and sustainable responses to hunger, poverty, displacement and disaster. We offer help to all people, regardless of their beliefs, without evangelizing or requiring a statement of faith.
Our vision is a world where everyone has food, voice and a safe place to call home.
Poverty. Disaster. Displacement.
When we team up with communities around the world, we are working together to move against hunger and poverty. We’re proud to be the toolbox communities need to make sustainable change.
As we combat these main two challenges, the community we are working with is at the helm. They weigh in on what their most urgent challenges are. As the program unfolds, CWS provides expert guidance, supplies and funding. Communities provide the time and effort to make the program successful. They care for shared gardens, help with construction, attend workshops and mobilize their neighbors.
Every two seconds, someone in the world is forced to leave their home and everything they know. With the threat of violence, persecution or disaster knocking on their door, they make the only choice they can to find safety—they run.
In recent years, fewer and fewer of the 100 million people who are forcibly displaced have access to the protection they need to rebuild their lives. Many nations that are hosting asylum seekers and refugees—including the United States—deny them access to fundamental rights and critical services or have effectively closed their borders.
We believe every family has the right to live in safety and dignity. That is why we welcome refugees and asylum seekers with open hearts and helping hands. Faith leaders and refugee communities lift their voices to advocate for better policies, and by standing in solidarity, we are helping keep immigrant families together. Whether through the U.S. asylum system or refugee resettlement program here at home, or by aiding communities overseas, we help the vulnerable build lives free from fear.
In a few minutes, your life can be torn apart. Winds, rain, waves or tremors can take away everything you love. War can erupt and completely change the life you once knew.
In the natural disaster cycle, we make sure we are with our neighbors in every stage. CWS programs help people prepare for the worst, making plans and gathering supplies.
Whether it’s a natural disaster or a humanitarian one, we team up with other responders to meet immediate needs. And when the time is right, we shift our focus to long-term recovery. When people are forced from their homes, we work hard to make sure they have safe and dignified lives.
The road to recovery and safety may be a long one, but no one should walk it alone.
CWS United States Offices
Results: Making a Difference
Over the decades, the specifics of our programs have shifted and evolved. The CWS family has grown. And our foundation of collaboration and welcome has remained unshakable. We proudly serve as the toolbox that our neighbors near and far use to build healthy, dignified and safe lives. Here are a few examples:
across 11 countries have gained better access to safe water and sanitation at home
were reached with life-saving services after a humanitarian emergency or natural disaster.
are better equipped to put food on the table through food security and livelihoods programs
We have responded to deadly emergencies in dozens of countries around the globe. In the late 1950s, serious floods hit Cuba in the midst of a political crisis. CWS provided financial support and worked with the U.S. military to airlift food, multivitamins and clothing to the island. As a severe famine swept through Ethiopia and the rest of the Horn of Africa in the 1980s, the CWS family mobilized a relief effort of over $17 million. In 2010, the world watched in horror as Haiti suffered one of the most deadly disasters in recent history during the earthquake on January 12. We responded to help people rebuild homes and livelihoods…and to make sure that they were better equipped to face the next disaster.
We have walked with families all over the world as they put food on the table, connect to clean water and build the businesses they need to thrive. CWS began to focus more and more on long-term development in the 1960s. By the late 1970s we were also building long-term programs into our disaster response work to make sure that families would not just recover but thrive. Today our food security, water, sanitation, hygiene, health and livelihood programs focus on everything from crop diversification in Honduras to renewable energy in Bosnia to water access at health posts in Myanmar.
We stand for welcome today, just like we did nearly eight decades ago. When the Refugee Act of 1980 passed, we had already resettled 350,000 refugees in communities across the United States. Today that number is over 865,000. In recent years fewer and fewer of the 100 million people who are forcibly displaced have access to the protection they need to rebuild their lives. Many nations that are hosting asylum seekers and refugees—including the United States—deny them access to fundamental rights and critical services or have effectively closed their borders.
We have worked alongside partners ranging from small community organizations to the United Nations to welcome, protect and support people on the move worldwide. In 1964, our emergency feeding program in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo reached 21,000 newly-arrived Angolans. We also distributed seeds and agricultural tools for longer-term food security. In the 1980s we recruited medical teams to work in refugee camps in Somalia. We have partnered with a refugee- and women-led organization in Cairo since 2013 that reaches tens of thousands of refugees annually through legal, medical, food, educational and mental health programs.