Church's Auxiliary for Social Action explained

Church's Auxiliary for Social Action
Foundation:	1947, India
Key People:	Busi Suneel Bhanu (Chairperson), Sushant Agarwal (Director)
Num Employees:	500
Homepage:	http://casa-india.org/pages/home.html

Church's Auxiliary for Social Action or CASA (founded in 1947) is a non-religious Indian development organisation and charitable trust based in New Delhi and a service wing of the National Council of Churches in India comprising the Orthodox and Protestant Church Societies in India. CASA is a member of ACT Alliance^[1]

Mar Aprem Mooken writes,^[2]

Genesis

The partition of India played a virtual havoc with peoples lives which Jawaharlal Nehru,^[3] then Prime Minister of India wanted to address and shared it with J. Waskom Pickett and Marshall Russell Reed who involved the National Council of Churches in India (NCCI) to lend a hand in mitigating the suffering of the displaced people for which the NCCI formed an ad hoc Relief Committee. Over the years', the Relief Committee took different names,

• 1947, Refugee and Famine Relief Committee or Central Relief Committee,^[4]
• 1955, Committee on Relief and Gift Supplies (CORAGS),^[5]
• Christian Agency for Social Action,^[6]
• (present) Church's Auxiliary for Social Action.

Funding

As a development non-religious organisation the activities of CASA are funded through the individuals, the Churches in India, the State, the corporates and a few overseas ecumenical bodies.^[3]

Programmatic interventions

CASA's approach to development could be put in the following way,^[8] The Cross Cutting Thematic Areas of CASA’s programmatic interventions are :1. Humanitarian Aid2. Development Initiatives to address Structural Poverty3. Gender Mainstreaming4. Climate Change5. Local Capacities for Peace and 'Do No Harm'

References

Further reading

• Book: Thomas J. Davis . Religion in Philanthropic Organizations: Family, Friend, Foe? . 2013 . 9780253009975 .
• Book: H. Dwight Swartzendruber . Forty Years of Service Beyond Our Borders . 2012 . Masthof Press . 9781601263636.
• Somen Das . Somen Das . Mission Redefined' (CASA at 60 - striving towards life in fullness . 2008 .
• Book: Damon P. Coppola . Introduction to International Disaster Management . 2007 . 9780080465739 .
• Book: Terry Brown . Other Voices Other Worlds: The Global Church Speaks Out on Homosexuality . 2006 . 9780898697933 .
• Book: Erwin Fahlbusch . The Encyclopedia of Christianity . 1999 . 2 . 9789004116955 .
• Church's Auxiliary for Social Action . From Despair to Hope: 50 Years of CASA . 1997 .
• Government of India . Government of India . Encyclopaedia of social work in India . 1987 . 4 .

Notes and References

1. http://www.actalliance.org/about/members/churchs-auxiliary-for-social-action-casa/ ACT Alliance Members
2. [Mar Aprem Mooken]
3. http://casa-india.org/pages/about-us/about-casa.html CASA - About us
4. The National Christian Council Review, Volume 97, Wesley Press, 1977, p.139. https://books.google.com/books?id=rfnYAAAAMAAJ&q=committee+on+relief+and+gift+supplies
5. H. Dwight Swartzendruber, Forty Years of Service Beyond Our Borders, Masthof Press, Morgantown, 2012. https://books.google.com/books?id=9MKLBQAAQBAJ&q=malelu&pg=PA64
6. Harold C. Fey (Edited), A History of the Ecumenical Movement, Volume 2: 1948-1968, Wipf and Stock, Eugene, 2004, p.228. https://books.google.com/books?id=BkNMAwAAQBAJ&dq=committee+on+relief+and+gift+supplies&pg=PR3
7. [Somen Das]
8. http://casa-india.org/pages/about-us/our-approach-to-development.html CASA, Our Approach to Development