CUSO

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CUSO, founded 6 June 1961 as Canadian University Students Overseas, is a Canadian non-profit organization that aids in the development of third-world countries. Its former Quebec arm, SUCO (formerly Service Universitaire Canadien Outre-mer, now Solidarité Union Coopération) separated from CUSO in 1979.

CUSO was founded as a university-based organization recruiting recently graduated students for volunteer service around the world. Soon, however, non-students were also being recruited and the original name altered to Canadian University Service Overseas. Ultimately, with an increasing focus on trades as well as professions and indeed a longstanding policy of attempting to move from volunteerism to project aid, the word "university" was dropped altogether in 1979 and "CUSO" ceased to be an acronym.

CUSO has also been also active in promoting social justice.

It was in its first decades roughly analogous to the Peace Corps of the United States and Voluntary Service Overseas of the UK and Ireland and was established at roughly the same time. However, unlike the Peace Corps, it was never a government agency although it began receiving federal government funding in 1965 and since 1968 the Canadian International Development Agency has provided most of CUSO's core funding. With CUSO's steadily decreasing emphasis on volunteerism -- it has for long been semi-facetiously described as politically correcting itself out of existence -- other organizations such as Voluntary Service Overseas have commensurately involved itself in recruiting volunteers in Canada and eleswhere.