Finn Church Aid’s (FCA) work in the world’s most fragile states brings significant results in all areas of operation. The results are published in FCA’s annual report 2016.

FCA is an established actor within the education sector, specialised in securing education for everyone, building learning spaces after disasters and enhancing the level of education.

“2016 was a challenging year for us, but we achieved remarkable results in all areas of our work. Especially our work with quality education grew significantly. This is very important now that less and less global aid is allocated to education”, says FCA’s Executive Director Jouni Hemberg.

The decreasing share of funding to education puts other development goals at risk, according to the U.N. Aid allocations to education are falling for the sixth year in a row and last year education received only 2.7 per cent of total aid available.

Despite the overall trend, FCA doubled the amount of its education projects in 2016 with the aim of increasing access to quality education for children and youth.

The achievements include the incorporation of career counselling into Cambodia’s national curriculum and the construction of hundreds of learning spaces in Nepal, where FCA is the second biggest international organisation to reconstruct earthquake-damaged schools. Last year FCA’s work resulted in access to education for 63 000 children in the Central African Republic.

A total of 132 000 children and youth benefited from FCA’s education projects in 2016 and 4 693 teachers took part in trainings in program countries.

Last year was also marked by budget cuts when the Finnish government’s decision to reduce funding for development cooperation came into force. FCA’s government funding was reduced from 15,5 million euros to 8,3 million. However, FCA continued to see positive development in the cooperation with international donors , and the international funding exceeded that of the state. Private and corporate donations exceeded targets for 2016.

In 2016 FCA’s expenditures were 34,7 million euro, of which 29,1 million was allocated to international aid. FCA is Finland’s largest organization in development cooperation and second largest in humanitarian aid. FCA is specialised in three themes: quality education, sustainable livelihoods and peace.

The work for sustainable livelihoods reached impressive results for instance in Nepal where 98 percent of families participating in women’s entrepreneurship programme have risen past the poverty line at the conclusion of the programme. In South Sudan local peace agreements were signed among stakeholders within Boma state and between Boma and Jonglei states, and over 90 percent of participants expressed their satisfaction in the process supported by FCA.

FCA works for peace in Finland. Since last autumn the project Reach Out supports religious communities in their grassroots level work against prejudice and hate speech.

Finn Church Aid Annual Report 2016 (pdf)

More information:

Jouni Hemberg, Executive Director for Finn Church Aid, p. +358 50 325 9579
jouni.hemberg(a)kirkonulkomaanapu.fi

Mikko Koivumaa, Head of Communications, p. +358 40 559 4030
mikko.koivumaa(a)kirkonulkomaanapu.fi