ECHO is a European, faith-based humanitarian aid organization that works all across the globe to eliminate suffering. They have a particularly strong focus on agriculture and teaching the affected communities how to make food for themselves and to be industrious so that they can eventually become independent of the aid organizations and maintain dignity by making a life for themselves. In their words, “The urban poor face high prices and low incomes, making nutritious food unattainable. Rural families are often malnourished because of a lack of diverse nutrients in their diets, if they have enough to eat at all. In both cases, children suffer the most. We gather solutions from around the world that are solving hunger problems and disseminate them to our active network. These solutions promote sustainable farming techniques, nutritional plants, and appropriate technologies. They are well tested and proven to be successful over and over again.”
Essentially, they work to help those who are teaching farmers around the world know how to be more effective in producing enough to meet the needs of their families and their communities. They in turn teach others and the ECHO effect continues.
One major aspect of the company that I like it that they are one of the organizations that I noticed has a particular investment in maintaining the cultural and spiritual aspects of the communities they work with. This is very important to me since we’ve been learning so much in class about the harm that some aid organizations do to the cultures in the places they operate in. Especially with the White Savior Complex always present, it was comforting to discover that they do all they can to gather information about the culture they are about to enter and perform tasks that they affected community has actually approved and asked for. This maintains and maximizes dignity.
Although ECHO is a faith-based organization that requires its aid workers to sign a pledge stating that they have given their lives to Christ, they are not extremely proselytizing. I like this because I believe the humanitarian imperative is for all people of all religions or lack thereof. With that being said, as a Christian, I also believe that Christ has called us to serve everyone, not just Christians. And exploiting a vulnerable population by making them choose a religion in exchange for food is immoral and not at all Christ-like.
It’s important to note that they do try to make ties to churches in the communities that they serve and religion is heavily influencing what they do and their mission, they do read the Bible with the affected groups as a means of comfort and consolation, but never for conversion purposes.
I’ve attached a link of a video on their site:
https://www.echonet.org/echo-videos/the-power-of-information-rod-sebastian