CHRISTIAN AID IRELAND COMBINED FINANCIAL STATEMENTS For the year ended 31 March 2016 Christian Aid Ireland Combined Financial Statements 2016 1 CONTENTS SUPPORTING PEOPLE CHALLENGING TO REALISE THEIR STRUCTURES AND RIGHTS SYSTEMS Overseas Programme Page 6 Overseas Programme Page 9 PROMOTING PROVIDING GENDER EQUALITY HUMANITARIAN AID Overseas Programme Page 11 Overseas Programme Page 13 3 Identity-Mission-Vision-Values 4 Message from the Chair 5 Message from the Chief Executive Officer 6 Supporting People to Realise their Rights 9 Challenging Structures and Systems 11 Promoting Gender Equality 13 Providing Humanitarian Aid 15 Fundraising 18 Looking Ahead 19 Review of Financial Outcome 21 Structure, Governance and Management 24 Accountants’ Report 25 Euro Combined Statement of Financial Activities 26 Euro Combined Balance Sheet 27 Euro Combined Cash Flow Statement 28 Euro Notes to the Financial Statements 40 Sterling Combined Statement of Financial Activities 41 Sterling Combined Balance Sheet 42 Sterling Combined Cash Flow Statement 43 Sterling Notes to the Financial Statements 52 Legal and Administrative Information Christian Aid Ireland Combined Financial Statements 2016 2 Identity Christian Aid Ireland is an international aid and development agency. We are an agency of our churches in Ireland and are mandated to work on relief, development and advocacy to end poverty. We work with local partners in over 40 countries worldwide. Mission Our mission is to eradicate poverty, to challenge the structures and systems that keep people poor and to support people to realise their rights. Vision Poverty is an outrage against humanity. It robs people of dignity, freedom, hope and power over their own lives. Christian Aid Ireland has a vision – an end to poverty – and we believe that vision can become a reality. We believe it is a scandal that people are still poor, that children go to bed hungry and uneducated, that families are homeless and living without hope, in the midst of so much wealth. We are driven to make change happen and to inspire others to help make it happen. Values Our work is based on our Christian belief that everyone, regardless of faith or race, is entitled to live a full life, free from poverty. Christian Aid Ireland Combined Financial Statements 2016 3 communities seventy years ago. That was in the aftermath of the Second World War, , today we continue to care for MESSAGE FROM people who have been displaced from their homes and homelands through war and violence, this time in Syria and other countries in that region. We still respond to THE CHAIR those communities today, wherever they are and regardless of their faith or race. Christian Aid Ireland cannot do the work we do without the help and generosity of our supporters. They are also partners in our work. To all who make our work possible, we not only owe a debt of gratitude, but an obligation of transparent accountability. We would particularly like to thank Irish Aid for their generous financial support over the last decade that has enabled us to continually expand and improve our overseas programmes. We are committed to working as efficiently and effectively as possible to maximise the impact of every pound or euro we are given. The environment for fundraising in Ireland has never been harder but we are encouraged and immensely grateful for the donations, both prayerful and financial, that we receive from all our supporters each year. So, on behalf of the Board, the staff and our partners worldwide, we would like to say a huge thank you for your continued support and generosity. Welcome to Christian Aid Ireland’s Annual Report for the st year ending 31 March 2016. May God bless you and yours, th Our 70 anniversary year was, for me, both challenging and inspiring in equal measure. At the beginning of May 2015 I was privileged to have been invited to speak at a Peace Conference in Bamako, Mali, organised by ACT Alliance1. The audience was a diverse cross-section of Malian society including government officials, religious and community leaders and refugee representatives who had travelled from neighbouring countries especially to speak at the conference. All were brought together in their common goal of seeking the best practices as religious leaders in building peace in their country. The Rt Revd Trevor Williams Chair of the Board, Christian Aid Ireland It is humbling that we in Ireland are regarded as standard bearers for successful peacebuilding. As Christian Aid Ireland takes forward the global lead for Tackling Violence and Building Peace for the wider Christian Aid organisation, we do so mindfully and honoured to undertake such a serious task. I would like to pay special tribute to the members of our Christian Aid Ireland Board who give generously of their time and skills to exercise their responsibilities to the highest governance standards. Many of the members also sit on the Board sub-committees and bring their own particular skills and expertise to the table which we are grateful for. 2 The foundation stone of our organisation is the Churches . We are the Churches Development Agency in Ireland and were set up to respond to broken and impoverished 1 ACT Alliance: Action by Churches Together, the worldwide ecumenical network for emergency relief. 2 CAI is the official relief and development agency of the Church of Ireland, the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, the Non-subscribing Presbyterian Church in Ireland, the Methodist Church in Ireland, the Moravian Church, the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), the Salvation Army, and the Irish Council of Churches. Christian Aid Ireland Combined Financial Statements 2016 4 walked to Iraq. When we came here we had nothing except the clothes on our back.’ MESSAGE FROM Nisreen told me in a very quiet, subdued voice that she used to have a lovely home in Syria. She would love to go THE CEO back but she knew in her heart that this would not happen. Nisreen’s story was not unique. I met many women refugees in Iraq and heard their stories, all of them distressing. We also worked hard through the year with our partners in other areas of conflict, including South Sudan, Colombia and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Meanwhile in Europe, where our work began all those years ago, Christian Aid continued to support our ACT Alliance (Action by Churches Together) partners to give much needed relief to exhausted refugees arriving on our shores. 2015 turned out to be a major year for climate change campaigners with the signing of the Paris Agreement at the UN Climate Summit at the end of the year. In the run- up to the agreement, Christian Aid supporters took part in numerous marches for climate justice in Cork, Galway, Dublin, Belfast, and many places in between. A group of our supporters even travelled from Ireland to Paris to add their voices to the call for all our governments to show some leadership. Climate change is, after all, one of the 2015 has been a significant year for our vision of an end to major causes of poverty in poorer countries. Unusual world poverty and for Christian Aid Ireland itself as we droughts and unpredictable rainy seasons have been th commemorated our 70 Anniversary year. leading to devastating crop failures. We celebrated the anniversary in a variety of ways: adding The other major development of interest in 2015 was the an impressive 70 new fundraising events to our all-Ireland adoption by the United Nations of 17 new ‘Sustainable programme and hosting thanksgiving services in Belfast Development Goals’. These replace the earlier Millennium and Cork, the latter attended by Dr Rowan Williams, the Development Goals and will apply from 2016 to 2030. Chair of Christian Aid Britain and Ireland. We also They cover a wide range of areas critical to ending completed a very successful four-year programme with poverty, including tackling inequality, discrimination, Irish Aid; celebrated the signing of the Paris Agreement on health, water sanitation, economic growth, climate change, climate change and welcomed the adoption by the United and food security. Nations of 17 new ‘Sustainable Development Goals’. I particularly welcome the inclusion of Gender Equality as It was also a year which saw hundreds of thousands more one of the new Goals, and the target of ‘eliminating all people fleeing conflict and violence and we had to react forms of violence against all women and girls in public and quickly to support our partners when not one but two private spheres’. devastating earthquakes hit Nepal in April and May. As we face into the coming years, Christian Aid and our In 1945, British and Irish church leaders came together to partners will be watching what governments do next to do something about the refugee crisis in continental ensure that the Sustainable Development Goals translate Europe. As the years went by, the churches’ agency – into meaningful action for the communities we work with which came to be known as Christian Aid – widened its around the world. remit to tackle poverty and the causes of poverty in the developing world. Seven decades on and the news in 2015 was once again dominated by the plight of refugees in Europe. As the violence in Syria and Iraq forced many thousands of families out of their homes, Christian Aid and our local partner organisations were working in and around the Rosamond Bennett conflict zone to give what help we could. This support CEO Christian Aid Ireland included food, water, blankets, hygiene kits and counselling. I visited northern Iraq earlier in the year to see some of this work for myself. One woman I met, called Nisreen, told me how she fled Syria with her husband and two children.