| Founder(s) | Dr. Bob Pierce |
|---|---|
| Type | Faith Based |
| Founded | 1970 |
| Location | Boone, North Carolina, USA |
| Area served | World Wide |
| Focus | Crisis Relief & Development |
| Method | Direct Aid / Program Funding |
| Revenue | > US$300,000,000[1] |
| Website | International Canada United Kingdom Germany Australia New Zealand Ireland Netherlands |
Samaritan's Purse is a non-denominational evangelical Christian humanitarian organization that works worldwide to assist people in physical need alongside their Christian missionary work. The organization’s president is Franklin Graham, son of Christian evangelist Billy Graham. The name of the organization is based on the New Testament Parable of the Good Samaritan, in which Jesus uses a parable to teach people the second great commandment - how to "love thy neighbour as thyself".
Samaritan’s Purse works in more than 100 countries around the world. International headquarters are in Boone, North Carolina, with additional U.S. facilities in Charlotte and North Wilkesboro, N.C. Affiliate offices are in Australia, Canada, Germany, Ireland, Hong Kong, Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. Field offices are located in some 20 countries across five continents.
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Bob Pierce founded Samaritan’s Purse in 1970 with a vision “to meet emergency needs in crisis areas through existing evangelical mission agencies and national churches.” Pierce had previously founded World Vision in 1950.
Franklin Graham met Pierce in 1973, and they made several trips together to visit relief projects and missionary partners in Asia and elsewhere. Graham became president of Samaritan's Purse in 1979 following Pierce’s death in 1978.
As the organization grew, Samaritan’s Purse not only funded mission partners but also began to develop its own large-scale relief projects: • Providing medical care in the midst of conflicts in Somalia in 1993, Rwanda in 1994, Sudan since 1997, Kosovo in 1999, Afghanistan in 2002, and Iraq in 2003. • Rebuilding or repairing thousands of houses following Hurricane Mitch in 1998, the El Salvador earthquakes in 2002, the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004, and Hurricane Katrina in 2005. • Chartering emergency airlifts to Indonesia and Pakistan in 2005, North Korea in 2007, and Myanmar and China in 2008. • Distributing food to hundreds of thousands of displaced people in Uganda and Darfur.
The organisation's mission statement states that the organization seeks to meet the spiritual and physical needs of people suffering from war, poverty, disaster, disease, and famine, with the purpose of global missionary work attendant on humanitarian aid. The organization aims at service for the church worldwide to propagate "the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ".[2]
Samaritan’s Purse seeks to specialize in emergency relief, shelter, water and sanitation, food and nutrition, medical care and public health, HIV/AIDS, and community-based livestock and livelihood projects.
In addition to responding to emergencies worldwide, Samaritan’s Purse includes several ongoing ministries.
• Operation Christmas Child is a 'global Christmas gift exchange' project operated by Samaritan's Purse. Each November it opens thousands of locations, typically at churches or schools, to collect shoeboxes filled with toys, school supplies, personal items, and other gifts. These boxes are then distributed as Christmas gifts, accompanied by Christian literature.[3] From 1993 through 2008, some 69 million gift boxes have been handed out in more than 130 countries.
• Disaster Relief responds to emergency situations. In the United States and Canada, Samaritan’s Purse mobilizes teams of volunteers to repair houses damaged by natural disasters. The organization has four tractor-trailer units loaded with emergency supplies and equipment. Each can serve as a self-contained base in a disaster zone.
• World Medical Mission, the medical arm of Samaritan’s Purse, was founded in 1977 by brothers Dr. Richard Furman and Dr. Lowell Furman to enable doctors to serve short-term assignments at overwhelmed missionary hospitals. The Post-Residency Program supports physicians as they serve two-year terms in mission hospitals and consider becoming career missionaries. World Medical Mission also operates a warehouse that ships equipment and supplies to mission hospitals and provides them with technical support.
• Children’s Heart Project provides surgery for children born with heart defects in countries where proper care is not available. Children are brought to North America, where services are donated by hospitals, surgeons, and host families and churches..
• HIV/AIDS Projects mobilize private, church, corporate, and government resources to respond to the AIDS pandemic. In partnership with the President’s Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief, Samaritan’s Purse is working in East Africa with education about the disease and abstinence-based prevention programs.
• Turn on the Tap is a campaign to provide safe drinking water in the developing world. Samaritan’s Purse-Canada holds the license to build BioSand Water Filters, which can provide a family with a perpetual source of safe drinking water. Samaritan’s Purse also drills and repairs wells, sets up large-scale filters in disaster zones, and helps to educate communities in hygiene and sanitation.
Samaritan’s Purse generates about $300 million annually. Of that amount, 88 percent goes directly to projects; 5 percent is used for administrative support; and 7 percent is spent on fundraising.[4]
Its financial statements are prepared in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles and an annual audit is performed by Dixon Hughes PLLC, an independent public accounting firm. A financial report is available on the organization’s website.
In 2001, The New York Times criticized Samaritan's Purse for having "blurred the line between church and state", in the way it had distributed publicly funded aid to victims of the El Salvador earthquake.[5] Residents from several villages stated they first had to sit through a half hour prayer meeting before receiving assistance.[6] In a statement, USAID said Samaritan's Purse had not violated federal guidelines, but emphasized the need for the organization to "maintain adequate and sufficient separation" between prayer sessions and publicly funded activities.[7]
In 2003, Samaritan's Purse was widely criticized after its president, Franklin Graham, stated that Islam is a "very evil and wicked religion",[8][9] leading to opposition campaigns by Islamic leaders.[10] Samaritan's Purse responded to accusations of being anti-Islamic by highlighting their long history of non-denominational cooperation and charity work in Baghdad without attempting to preach or proselytize.[11]
Franklin Graham has also been criticized in the United States, for drawing a full-time salary from Samaritan's Purse, while at the same time receiving a full-time salary from Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. Non-profit experts have doubted that one person can do two full-time jobs leading organizations that employ hundreds and spend hundreds of millions around the world.[12]
The Samaritan's Purse project, Operation Christmas Child, has also been criticized in several countries, most notably in the UK,[13][14] but also in Canada,[15] the United States,[16] Ireland,[17] and others. In 2003, The British supermarket chain, Co-op, and South Wales Fire Service both suspended their support for the project after numerous complaints about its religious connections.[18][9] Samaritan's Purse responded by stating that Christian literature was only handed out where it was deemed appropriate.[19]