Oxfam

Oxfam International is a confederation of 13 organizations working with over 3,000 partners in more than 100 countries to find lasting solutions to poverty and injustice.

The Oxfam International Secretariat leads, facilitates and supports collaboration between the Oxfam affiliates to increase Oxfam International’s impact on poverty and injustice through advocacy campaigns, development programs and emergency response.

Oxfam Great Britain is based in Oxford, UK. It was founded in England in 1942 as the Oxford Committee for Famine Relief by a group of Quakers, social activists, and Oxford academics. It was one of a number of local committees formed in support of the National Famine Relief Committee. Their mission was to persuade the UK government to allow food relief through the Allied blockade for the starving citizens of Nazi-occupied Greece. The first overseas Oxfam was founded in Canada in 1963. The committee changed its name to its telegraph address, OXFAM, in 1965.

Contents
1 History and beginnings
2 Oxfam's work
3 Shops
4 Funding
5 Fundraising
6 Criticism
7 References
8 See also
9 External links
9.1 National Oxfam websites
9.2 Campaigns
9.3 Resources and Materials
10 Further Reading

History and beginnings

The original Oxford Committee for Famine Relief, from which Oxfam takes its name, was a group of concerned citizens such as Canon Theodore Richard Milford (1896–1987), Professor Gilbert Murray and his wife Lady Mary, Cecil Jackson-Cole and Sir Alan Pim.

Oxfam's work

Though Oxfam's initial concern was the provision of food to relieve famine, over the years Oxfam has developed strategies to combat 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 based on their needs; 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 lobbyist, advocacy and popular campaigning, trying to affect policy decisions on the causes of conflict at local, national, and international levels.

Oxfam works on trade justice, fair trade, education, debt and aid, livelihoods, health, HIV/AIDS, gender equality, conflict (campaigning for an international arms trade treaty) and natural disasters, democracy and human rights, and climate change.

Shops

The first permanent Oxfam gift shop opened in February 1948 on the ground floor of 17 Broad Street, Oxford, England, a lease on which building had been taken by the Oxford Committee for Famine Relief (later Oxfam) the previous November. Today Oxfam operates approximately 750 shops throughout 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.

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, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and the European Union. It has an annual operating budget of over $300 million USD.

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, the United Kingdom and Japan.

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.

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.

Facing more than 90,000 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.

Nonetheless, on 20 June 2007 representatives of the Government of Ethiopia and senior leaders from Starbucks Coffee Company announced that they had concluded an agreement regarding distribution, marketing and licensing that recognizes the importance and integrity of Ethiopia’s specialty coffee designations.

Oxfam Great Britain has been strongly criticised by other NGOs for becoming too close to Tony Blair's New Labour Government in the UK.

In 2005, the website "New Internationalist" described Oxfam as a "Big International Non-Government Organisation (BINGO)." The website criticises such organizations for being undemocratic whilst wielding enormous financial and economic clout.

On 28 April 2007 two academics in Melbourne, Australia representing a right-wing think tank lodged a complaint with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission accusing Oxfam of misleading or deceptive conduct under the Trade Practices Act in its promotion of Fairtrade coffee. The academics claimed that high certification costs and low wages for workers undermine claims that Fairtrade helps to lift producers out of poverty. These claims were subsequently dismissed by the Commission.

In 2003, Oxfam Belgium produced a poster with a picture of a dripping blood orange. The poster read, "Israeli fruits have a bitter taste...reject the occupation of Palestine, don't buy Israeli fruits and vegetables." Oxfam was widely criticized because of the poster’s perceived anti-Israel political message and its allusion to traditional, antisemitic blood libel rhetoric. Following publicity and pressure the NGO Monitor, Oxfam removed the poster from their web site and Ian Anderson, the chairman of Oxfam International, issued a letter of apology. However, Oxfam maintained its support for a boycott of products grown in the West Bank and Gaza. Oxfam was criticized for its policy of what has been termed "selective morality."