CARE International

CARE (Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere, formerly Cooperative for American Remittances to Europe) is a major international humanitarian agency delivering emergency relief and long-term international development projects. Founded in 1945, CARE is nonsectarian, impartial, and non-governmental. It is one of the largest and oldest humanitarian aid organizations focused on fighting global poverty. In 2019, CARE reported working in 104 countries, supporting 1,349 poverty-fighting projects and humanitarian aid projects, and reaching over 92.3 million people directly and 433.3 million people indirectly.

CARE's programmes in the developing world address a broad range of topics including emergency response, food security, water and sanitation, economic development, climate change, agriculture, education, and health. CARE also advocates at the local, national, and international levels for policy change and the rights of poor people. Within each of these areas, CARE focuses on empowering and meeting the needs of women and girls and promoting gender equality.

CARE International is a confederation of eighteen CARE national members, each of which is registered as an autonomous non-profit non-governmental organization in its own country, two candidate members and one affiliate member.

CARE, then the Cooperative for American Remittances to Europe, was formally founded on November 27, 1945, and was originally intended to be a temporary organization. Twenty-two members from the American Council of Voluntary Agencies for Foreign Service met to ratify the articles of incorporation for CARE to Europe. Churches, welfare organisations and trade unions were among the 22 founding members. World War II had ended in August of the same year. After pressure from the public and Congress, President Harry S. Truman agreed to let private organizations provide relief for those starving due to the war. CARE was initially a consortium of twenty-two U.S. charities (a mixture of civic, religious, cooperative, farm, and labour organizations) to deliver food aid to Europe in the aftermath of World War II. Donald M. Nelson was the first executive director, but then William N. Haskell served as executive director from late 1945 until 1947. In February 1946, William N. Haskell wrote to Oskar Lange, the Polish ambassador in Washington, explaining the plan and asking for his assistance in obtaining Polish government's consent to its extension to Poland. The organization delivered its first food packages in 1946.

CARE's food aid took the form of CARE Packages, which were at first delivered to specific individuals: the US people paid $10 to send a CARE Package of food to a loved one in Europe, often a family member. President Truman bought the first CARE package. CARE guaranteed delivery within four months to anyone in Europe, even if they had left their last known address, and returned a signed delivery receipt to the sender. Because European postal services were unreliable at the time these signed receipts were sometimes the first confirmation that the recipient had survived the war.

The first CARE Packages were in fact surplus "Ten-in-One" US army rations packs (designed to contain a day's meals for ten people). In early 1946 CARE purchased 2.8 million of these warehoused rations packs, originally intended for the invasion of Japan, and began advertising in America. On May 11, 1946, six months after the agency's incorporation, the first CARE Packages were delivered in Le Havre, France. These packages contained staples such as canned meats, powdered milk, dried fruits, and fats along with a few comfort items such as chocolate, coffee, and cigarettes. (Several on the CARE Board of Directors wished to remove the cigarettes, but it was deemed impractical to open and reseal 2.8 million boxes.) 1946 also marked CARE's first expansion out of the US with the establishment of an office in Canada.

By early 1947 the supply of "Ten-in-One" ration packs had been exhausted and CARE began assembling its own packages. These new packages were designed with the help of a nutritionist. They did not include cigarettes and were tailored somewhat by destination: Kosher packages were developed, and for example packages destined for the United Kingdom included tea rather than coffee, and packages for Italy included pasta. By 1949 CARE offered and shipped more than twelve different packages. From July 1948 to the present, CARE sent 100,000 packages to Japan.

Although the organization had originally intended to deliver packages only to specified individuals, within a year CARE began delivering packages addressed for example "to a teacher" or simply "to a hungry person in Europe". These unspecified donations continued and in early 1948 CARE's board voted narrowly to officially move towards unspecified donations and to expand into more general relief. Some founding member agencies disagreed with this shift, arguing that more general relief would be a duplication of the work of other agencies, but donors reacted favourably, contributions increased, and this decision would mark the beginning of CARE's shift towards a broader mandate.