About Oxfam Canada

Our Vision

Oxfam’s vision is a just world without poverty. We envision a world in which people can influence decisions which affect their lives, enjoy their rights, and assume their responsibilities as full citizens of a world in which all human beings are valued and treated equally.

Our Mission

Oxfam Canada’s mission is to build lasting solutions to poverty and injustice with a focus on improving the lives and promoting the rights of women and girls.

Working with Canadians, our partners and allies around the world, we mobilize people and resources to change policies, practices, attitudes and behaviours that create inequality and human suffering.

Oxfam is committed to strengthening a global movement in support of human rights and gender justice on a healthy planet.

Oxfam Canada is an affiliate of the international Oxfam Confederation, a group of 17 organizations working together to find lasting solutions to poverty and injustice.

We work with local partners in over 20 countries to eradicate poverty and injustice, with a focus on women’s rights and gender equality.

We believe that together, people can create a fair world, free of poverty and injustice. A fair world respects the basic rights of all human beings to:

• earn a decent living to support themselves and their families
• enjoy basic education and health care
• get help in life-threatening disasters
• speak out for their rights
• be treated as equal

Oxfam Canada’s annual operating budget is sourced from a combination of individual donors and institutional funders including CIDA. Oxfam Canada's annual financial statements, are available here.

Oxfam Canada's 2007-2012 Strategic Plan: "Walking the Talk on Women's Rights"

History

The name “Oxfam” comes from the Oxford Committee for Famine Relief, founded in Britain in 1942. The group campaigned for food supplies to be sent through an allied naval blockade to starving women and children in enemy-occupied Greece during the Second World War.

Oxfam Canada was independently incorporated in 1966; the first Board of Directors included 21 distinguished Canadians. Oxfam began to provide educational materials to schools and undertake advocacy work in public policy development.

Today, Oxfam Canada works with over 100 partner organizations in developing countries; tackling the root causes of poverty and inequity and helping people to create self-reliant and sustainable communities. In Canada, Oxfam is active in education, policy advocacy and building a constituency of support for our work.