Summary in English

Common Responsibility Campaign 2010 helps poor families with children

The Common Responsibility Campaign 2010 begins on February 7th 2010. 40 000 volunteers will go canvassing around Finland. We will be raising funds for poor families with children in Finland and in Haiti. More information about the campaign will be posted here in the course of the next few weeks.

Background

The Common Responsibility Campaign (known in Finnish as 'Yhteisvastuukeräys') is Finland's largest annual fundraising campaign, organised by the Finnish Lutheran Church and its Church Resources Agency (Kirkkopalvelut ry). First launched in 1950, the campaign's mission is to raise awareness of social injustice and deprivation, to influence politicians and policies, and to develop innovative working methods among communities and beneficiaries.

The Common Responsibility Campaign defends neglected people and advocates for caring and justice. Our aim is to help people help themselves.

The campaign is run by a small coordination unit in Helsinki. 40 000 volunteers and all parishes around the country participate in its activities each year.

Since 1950, the Common Responsibility Campaign has reached hundreds of thousands of people both in Finland and abroad.

Principles of the Campaign

The Common Responsibility Campaign is the yearly collection of the Lutheran Church. Its mission is to promote deaconal responsibility that focuses on alleviating suffering and advocating for justice.
Patron: The President of the Republic, Tarja Halonen
Time of Collection: List collection during February, March and April.
Executor: Church Resources Agency

The Common Responsibility Campaign works to help those in need in Finland and abroad. Fighting indifference, we encourage society and its members to assume responsibility.

The Common Responsibility Campaign empowers people to help others and influence political decision makers.

The Proceeds of the Common Responsibility Fundraising Campaign
are divided as follows:

60%to international deaconal work
The proceeds are used to fund aid programmes carried out by the Lutheran World Federation and the World Council of Churches in the poorest communities in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Funds are channelled and delivered through FinnChurchAid.
Every year, the campaign highlights the problems facing a different issue or group.
20%to beneficiaries in Finland, chosen specifically every year
In recent years, the Campaign funds have been used to support projects that develop social and deaconal work.

10%to the deaconal funds of the dioceses
The underprivileged receive financial aid from the deaconal funds of the dioceses. With the proceeds from the Campaign, the dioceses can also support various deaconal projects in their parishes.

10%to a target chosen by the local parish
Parishes vary in the ways in which they use their own share of the proceeds. The funds are used for deaconal aid, cooperative projects in the neighbourhood, or to support an aid organisation, for instance. Some parishes turn over their share to the national targets in Finland or abroad.

Expenses of the Campaign
The nationwide expenses of the Campaign consist of coordination costs, educational materials, as well as materials for awareness raising and advocacy.
The intention is to support the parishes and give them the possibility of organising the Campaign as well as possible in their own neighbourhood.

Campaign results from recent years:

2009 - 4 383 773.76 euros
2008 - 4 714 776.36 euros
2007 - 5 024 288.11 euros
2006 - 5 075 140.55 euros
2005 - 4 706 493.16 euros
2004 - 4 824 996.64 euros
2003 - 4 763 254.67 euros
2002 - 5 225 287.16 euros
2001 - 4 666 028.77 euros
2000 - 5 233 927.18 euros

History of the Campaign
Toivo Laitinen, secretary of SKSK, and Lauri Tuomi, secretary of social matters, made a tour of Northern and Eastern Finland in the early autumn of 1949. There they saw what two successive crop failures had caused.

Children were malnourished and ill; in addition, unemployment made it difficult for families to survive. That very year, two welfare organisations established during the war had been dissolved. The country lacked a system that could organise emergency aid for the regions and people that had been tried most sorely.

After their tour, Laitinen and Tuomi proposed a major fundraising campaign to help the victims of frost and unemployment in Northern and Eastern Finland.

A bishops' meeting made the decision to organise the collection in December 1949. The proceeds from the first Campaign were decided to be divided so that 50% of the campaign income of the local parishes would be used for their own deaconal work. Of the remaining part, half was given to deaconal institutions and half to the deaconal work of the dioceses. The vicar of Varkaus, Kustaa Sarsa, came up with the name for the Campaign.

The President of the Republic was invited to be the patron of the Campaign. From the first collection year on, it became a tradition for the President to give an opening speech for the Campaign; to start with, only on the radio, and later on television.

In the 1950s, the proceeds of the Common Responsibility Fundraising Campaign were used in Finland alone. The funds were used for repairing of derelict residential buildings, and organising recreational holidays for mothers. Poor households were provided with a cow or a horse; disabled people received wheelchairs, retired people were given proper beds. Talented children were also given the means to go to school.

Every year, a special group of beneficiaries is chosen. The Campaign has thus profiled several groups of people in difficulty, such as widows, orphans, the unemployed, the homeless, the mentally and physically disabled, and lonely elderly people.

In the 1960s it was felt that aid should be channelled to foreign targets as well. In 1963, help was sent to the church of Ambo-Kavango in Namibia, familiar to Finns from missionary work, and to victims of famine.

Ever since its launch, the Common Responsibility Fundraising Campaign has been a success. Even in 1950, the campaign was immediately carried out in every parish in the country. The goal of the first Campaign was to collect 30 million marks; but campaigners doubled that, raising around 60 million marks.

Traditionally, the most important means of raising funds for the Campaign has been the collection list, with which volunteers go canvassing from door to door. Today rouhgly half of the total proceeds of the Common Responsibility Campaign come from list collection.

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