What is international development?
What is International Development?
Our Vision
Life with dignity, equality for all people and a world without poverty and injustice.
Our Mission
Our mission is to resource, empower and support developing communities to defeat poverty and injustice and enable them to build a better life and future. We engage people to comprehend injustice and take action to restore our world as a place where justice, dignity and equality are a reality for all people.
Our Mission explained:
Empowering people to defeat poverty and injustice
The Salvation Army works with poor and marginalised people in any community that looks to us for support. Because we are a part of developing communities, we intimately understand the needs and issues these communities face. As a community- based organisation, The Salvation Army, motivated by our Christian faith, encourages and enables people in developing communities to be empowered to defeat poverty and injustice. Empowering people involves increasing skills and confidence in local people within developing communities so that they can build a better future for themselves and the generations to come. With help from the global community, we resource these community-led initiatives in any way we can.
Enabling life with dignity
Our Christian belief is that all people are equal. All people deserve basic human rights, rights that many of us in richer countries take for granted. People of every race and creed have a right to a life of dignity, free from physical, emotional and spiritual poverty, oppression, injustice and exploitation. We all have a right to learn and to be loved, to be known and to have the basics, at least, to survive each day. To enable people to live a life of dignity we ensure that the most poor and marginalised are favoured first in our work. By supporting empowering projects involving the whole community and other partners where needed, we ensure that everyone can play their part in developing, restoring and enabling life to be lived with dignity and fulfilment.
Engaging our ‘glocal’ community
We believe that our global and local communities are inseparable. Because of this belief, our work has a ‘glocal’ focus. This means we know that the choices we make and the actions we take directly affect the lives of our neighbours in developing communities and our planet. Imagining a better world is not enough. Nor is it acceptable to leave it to the ‘greats’ of our world – those who’s fame and influence have caused great change throughout history and in our present day. The battle against poverty and injustice is a fight worth fighting. And it is a struggle that needs every person to engage in. It is only when the vast majority of people are willing to live this vision, that we will see our world change for the better. To creatively engage our glocal community, we help others to comprehend the issues and needs of people in developing countries and to take positive action to stop injustice and overcome poverty and inequality. We also join our voices in campaigning and advocacy with larger coalitions and movements to ensure that we are working with our whole community to see this vision become a reality.