Member Profile: CARE

CARE's water strategy emphasizes capacity building, partnership and gender equity, and promotes service delivery including the construction of infrastructure as a means of maintaining credibility and knowledge for advocacy. The goal reflects CARE's commitment to maximize service to individuals and families in the poorest communities in the world. To achieve this goal, CARE works at national, international and local levels with a range of interventions and multiple partners, including the private sector. Our water programming includes rural and peri-urban water supplies, hygiene and sanitation, on-farm water management, watershed management, and integrated water resources management.

Water is critical to maintaining livelihoods and reducing poverty, and has been an important part of CARE's work for many years. CARE is well known and respected for our drinking water programming, water management at the community/farm level, and maintenance of wetlands and ecosystems within integrated conservation and development projects. Currently, CARE has about 150 projects
in 45 countries with water, sanitation and hygiene activities. CARE's first water and sanitation project was in 1957 in San Mateo Atenco, Mexico. Over five decades, CARE's programming in community water supply has evolved substantially. During the 1980s, CARE gradually introduced other components, such as health and hygiene education, and sanitation through the provision of latrines. Our projects began to incorporate watershed protection as more holistic approaches to resource management were adopted. In the 1990s, CARE focused on sustainability issues. This resulted in greater emphasis on people making decisions about their own water and sanitation systems and water management, specifically regarding the formation of water user associations, the training of system caretakers, and cost recovery
contributing to capital investment as well as operation and maintenance.

CARE is one of the world's largest private humanitarian organizations. Headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, we're part of an international confederation of 11 member organizations committed to helping communities in the developing world achieve lasting victories over poverty.

The scope of our mission has changed considerably since our founding in 1945, when 22 American organizations came together to rush lifesaving CARE Packages to survivors of World War II. Thousands of Americans, including President Harry S. Truman contributed to the effort. On May 11, 1946, the first 20,000 packages reached the battered port of Le Havre, France. Some 100 million more CARE Packages reached people in need during the next two decades, first in Europe and later in Asia and other parts of the developing world.

Over the years, our work has expanded as we've addressed the world's most threatening problems. In the 1950s, we expanded into emerging nations and used U.S. surplus food to feed the hungry. In the 1960s, we pioneered primary health care programs. In the 1970s, CARE responded to massive famines in Africa with both emergency relief and long-term agroforestry projects, integrating environmentally sound tree- and land-management practices with farming programs.

Today, our staff of more than 12,000 -- most of whom are citizens of the countries where we work-- help strengthen communities through an array of programs that work to create lasting solutions to root causes of poverty.