The Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD) is the domestic antipoverty and social justice program of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB).
CCHD was begun in 1969 as the "National Catholic Crusade Against Poverty" by the Catholic bishops in the United States, in part as a response to Pope Paul VI's encyclical Populorum progressio ("The Progress of Peoples"). CCHD's mission is "to address the root causes of poverty in America through promotion and support of community-controlled self-help organizations and through transformative social justice, education, and solidarity between poor and non-poor." [1]
CCHD is supported by an annual collection in U.S. Catholic parishes, and individual donations.
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Through annual grants provided in collaboration with local dioceses, CCHD funds community organizations, community-run schools, minority-owned cooperatives and credit unions, capital for business development and job training programs, and setting up rural cooperatives. CCHD has distributed over 80,000 grants to date. Examples of CCHD efforts to help the disadvantaged are working to provide people "access to energy-efficient, green opportunities funded by the federal economic stimulus program" and getting the city of Boston and its contract vendors to remove questions about some past crimes from job applications.[2]
CCHD has come under fire from critics within the Church, alleging that the organization was promoting abortion, contraception and radical politics by funding the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, and that the CCHD was a force of internal corruption within the USCCB. [3] [4] CCHD has responded in 2008[5] that all projects are consistent with Catholic doctrine, all grant proposals are reviewed by a committee of bishops and approved by the local diocese before being funded, and funded projects are monitored during the life of the grant. Criticism continues in 2011.[6]