UnitingWorld is the international aid and partnerships agency of the Uniting Church in Australia, based in Sydney Australia.
As a partner of the Australian Government, UnitingWorld receives funding to implement development and poverty alleviation programs in the Pacific, Asia and Africa. [1] [2]
The Uniting Church in Australia was established when most congregations of the Methodist Church of Australasia, the Congregational Union of Australia and most of the Presbyterian Church of Australia united in June 1977. Each of these Churches had established their own overseas mission board by the 1850s: the Methodist Overseas Missions (MOM), the London Missionary Society (LMS) and the Presbyterian Board of Ecumenical Relations and Mission (BOEMAR). At the time of union, these mission boards merged to form the Commission for World Mission, which eventually became Uniting International Mission (UIM). [3]
In July 2000, Uniting Church Overseas Aid (UCOA) was established as a separate aid and community development agency of the Uniting Church in Australia. [4] UCOA and UIM worked in tandem, but under separate mandates; UCOA to deliver development projects and humanitarian aid alongside partner churches; [5] UIM to support church leadership, advocacy and Christian discipleship within partner communities. In 2008, these agencies merged under the name ‘UnitingWorld,’ and the twofold mandate remains.
Today, UnitingWorld works in partnership with 18 overseas church denominations to support more than 180,000 people a year through sustainable community development projects. [6]
The three denominations that united to form the Uniting Church in Australia each brought their own historic links with overseas churches and these connections have continued. [7] Uniting Church members were still working in partner churches up until the 1970s but the decolonization of Oceania and the Asia Pacific and shifts in the theology of mission began to reshape how people engaged with partner churches.
The various churches often decolonized even before national independence, with founding denominations coming to prefer independent indigenous churches over a traditional missionary approach. [8] This allowed relationships between the Uniting Church in Australia and churches overseas to mature from dependency (for leadership, resources and funding) into interdependence and partnership. [9]
UnitingWorld's mission is to drive collaboration with the global Church to strengthen its shared ministry and address the causes and consequences of poverty, violence and injustice. [10]
It focuses on five areas: Poverty alleviation, gender equality, leadership, climate change and disaster risk reduction, and emergency response. [6]
Recently UnitingWorld has been supporting partner churches in the Pacific to develop contextual theologies for development in the areas of gender equality, [11] [12] disaster resilience and climate change, [13] and child protection. [14]
Dr Sureka Goringe has been the National Director of UnitingWorld since July 2017. [15]
The Christian Church is a mainline Protestant Christian denomination in the United States and Canada. The denomination started with the Restoration Movement during the Second Great Awakening, first existing during the 19th century as a loose association of churches working towards Christian unity, then slowly forming quasi-denominational structures through missionary societies, regional associations, and an international convention. In 1968, the Disciples of Christ officially adopted a denominational structure at which time a group of churches left to remain nondenominational.
The economy of Papua New Guinea is largely underdeveloped. It is dominated by the agricultural, forestry, and fishing sector and the minerals and energy extraction sector. The agricultural, forestry, and fishing sector accounts for most of the labour force of Papua New Guinea, while the minerals and energy extraction sector is responsible for most of the export earnings.
The Uniting Church in Australia (UCA) was founded on 22 June 1977, when most congregations of the Methodist Church of Australasia, about two-thirds of the Presbyterian Church of Australia and almost all the churches of the Congregational Union of Australia united under the Basis of Union. According to the church, it had 243,000 members in 2018. In the 2016 census, about 870,200 Australians identified with the church; in the 2011 census, the figure was 1,065,796. The UCA is Australia's third-largest Christian denomination, behind the Catholic and the Anglican Churches. There are around 2,000 UCA congregations, and 2001 National Church Life Survey (NCLS) research indicated that average weekly attendance was about 10 per cent of census figures.
The World Evangelical Alliance (WEA) is an interdenominational organization of evangelical Christian churches, serving more than 600 million evangelicals, founded in 1846 in London, England, United Kingdom to unite evangelicals worldwide. WEA is the largest international organization of evangelical churches. The headquarters are in Deerfield, Illinois, with UN offices in New York City, Geneva, and Bonn. It brings together 9 regional and 143 national evangelical alliances of churches, and over one hundred member organizations. Moreover, the WEA includes a certain percentage of individual evangelical Christian churches. As of March 2021, the Secretary General of the WEA is German theologian Thomas Schirrmacher.
The Assemblies of God (AG), officially the World Assemblies of God Fellowship, is a group of over 144 autonomous self-governing national groupings of churches that together form the world's largest Pentecostal denomination.
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The Presbyterian Church of Australia (PCA) is the largest Presbyterian denomination in Australia.
Oaktree is an Australian-based, non-government organisation that specialises in international youth development. Their purpose is to lead, demand and create a more just world. Founded in 2003, the organisation is run by young people aged 16 to 26, and overseen by an advisory board.
Catholic Relief Services (CRS) is the international humanitarian agency of the Catholic community in the United States. Founded in 1943 by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, the agency provides assistance to 130 million people in more than 110 countries and territories in Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and Eastern Europe.
UnitingCare Australia is the national body for the UnitingCare network, made up of the Uniting Church in Australia's (UCA) community services agencies.
The Australian Council For International Development (ACFID) is an independent national association of Australian non-government organisations (NGOs) working in the field of international aid and development. ACFID was founded in 1965, with Syd Einfeld as Chairman, and has over 130 members working in 90 developing countries and supported by over 1.5 million Australians. It lobbies for non-government aid organisations, and Australian government development aid.
World Vision Australia (WVA) is an ecumenical Christian non-governmental organisation based in Melbourne, Australia. It is a part of the World Vision International Partnership led by World Vision International. WVA is Australia's largest overseas aid and development organisation, operating primarily to assist overseas communities living in poverty. It also carries out development work in Australia with First Nations communities.
The Kiribati Uniting Church (KUC) is a united Protestant Christian denomination in Kiribati. With approximately 40,000 members, and 136 congregations, the KUC is the second-largest religious group in Kiribati and accounts for approximately 31 percent of the population of the country.
The New Zealand Aid Programme is the New Zealand Government's international aid and development agency. The New Zealand Aid Programme is managed by the Pacific and Development Group in the New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT). Previously a semi-autonomous body known as the New Zealand Agency for International Development (NZAID), it was reintegrated back into MFAT as the International Development Group following a restructure in 2009. Its Māori name is Nga Hoe Tuputupu-mai-tawhiti – the paddles that bring growth from afar. The Head of the New Zealand Aid Programme is Jonathan Kings, a lawyer and public servant. According to the OECD, 2020 official development assistance from New Zealand decreased by 5.2% to US$531 million, representing 0.27% of Gross national income.
ACT Alliance is a global alliance of more than 145 churches and related organisations from over 120 countries to provide humanitarian aid for poor and marginalized people. 76% of its member organisations are rooted on the global south, 22% in the global north and 2% have a global presence.
Episcopal Relief & Development is an international relief and development agency of the Episcopal Church. It was established in 1940 as the Presiding Bishop's Fund for World Relief. Episcopal Relief and Development works in approximately 40 countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean, North America, and the Middle East. They build partnerships with local Episcopal and Anglican dioceses and related organizations based on need, capacity and available resources.
The Development Policy Centre (Devpol) is an aid and development policy think tank based at the Crawford School of Public Policy in the College of Asia and the Pacific at The Australian National University. Devpol undertakes independent research and promotes practical initiatives to improve the effectiveness of Australian aid, to support the development of Papua New Guinea and the Pacific Islands region, and to contribute to better global development policy.
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The United Theological College (UTC) is an Australian theological college and a founding member of Charles Sturt University's School of Theology. As well as providing undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in all areas of theology, the UTC trains ministry candidates for the Uniting Church in Australia Synod of New South Wales and Australian Capital Territory.
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