Timeline: A history of Concern Worldwide

In 1968, a small group of people in Ireland launched a major aid operation in response to famine and conflict in Biafra, because they couldn’t continue to sit by and watch it play out. 

More than half a century later, Concern still works under the same principle, doing whatever we can and whatever it takes to help millions of families break the cycle of poverty each year. Here’s a closer look at our last six decades of work. 

Concern Worldwide begins as Africa Concern in the living room of John and Kay O’Loughlin-Kennedy, an ordinary couple who were watching the horrors of conflict play out in Nigeria’s breakaway province of Biafra on the evening news. John’s brother, Father Raymond Kennedy, had also been in Biafra and brings back news of a developing famine — a catastrophe still fresh in Irish historical memory. 

The deadliest tropical cyclone on record, Cyclone Bhola, makes landfall in East Pakistan on November 12, 1970, killing as many as 500,000 people and furthering a hunger crisis amid political instability. 

Africa Concern becomes Concern Worldwide with the launch of the Pakistani Famine Appeal. The first volunteers arrive in Calcutta in 1971 to support displaced Bangladeshis, shortly before the start of a war of independence that will continue for most of the year. 

Concern arrives in Ethiopia in the autumn of 1973 as part of a massive mobilisation to prevent famine in the northwestern province of Wollo. Unfortunately, the international warning system is too late to avert disaster. A team led by Father Jack Finucane (Aengus’s brother and a fellow volunteer from Biafra) help to triage a desperate situation that kills 200,000. 

A four-year genocide in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot begins in 1975, killing between 1.5 and 3 million people over just four years. Millions more are displaced, crossing the border into Thailand. This creates the largest humanitarian crisis of its time and triggers a massive international humanitarian response. 

Another famine is confirmed in Ethiopia in 1983, this time affecting the provinces of Tigray and Wollo. It’s the worst in over a century; it’s also the first famine to be seen around the world via television broadcasts. Jack Finucane is a key figure in bringing media attention to those most affected by it, and Concern’s lifesaving response, all while managing a team of nearly 950 humanitarians (over 93% of whom are Ethiopian nationals).  

This coverage launches an unprecedented public response. The charity supergroup Band Aid forms in response to this with the charity single “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” released in 1984. Jack works with Band Aid founder Bob Geldof to spread awareness. Part of the $185 million raised by Live Aid, Geldof’s 1985 benefit concert held in London and Philadelphia, is donated to Concern. The funds support over 52,000 people across 26 resettlement sites in Korem, Ethiopia.

In the wake of the devastating famine in Ethiopia, Concern Mozambique opens at the height of one of the deadliest civil wars in Africa. Over 1 million people will die from either violence or famine over 15 years between 1977 and 1992. Mozambique is among the first responses Concern launches as more than a dozen countries across the continent fall into civil wars. Many of these conflicts continue for more than a decade. 

Concern expands its fundraising offices, beginning with one in Belfast in 1988. In 1991, Concern Worldwide UK opens in London, followed by Concern Worldwide US in New York in 1994 and Chicago in 1999.

Most data suggests that the spread of HIV and AIDS began in sub-Saharan Africa in the late 1970s, with a rise in cases throughout the 1980s. The continent becomes the hardest-hit in a growing pandemic linked to fear and stigma around a new “killer disease.” 

Concern launches a response in Somalia in 1992 after famine is confirmed amid drought and conflict. The response team includes 23-year-old Irish nurse Valerie Place, the youngest volunteer at the time and the manager of a therapeutic feeding centre for young children. On February 22, 1993, Place is fatally shot when the humanitarian convoy she was traveling with is ambushed. Aengus Finucane, who is also traveling in the convoy, administers her last rites. 

26 years later, Dr. Du’ale Mohammed Adam is also killed in Somalia during a 2016 explosion. At the time, Dr. Adam — a 33-year-old father of five — is working with Concern to address a growing drought in the country that had been threatening to create another famine. 

In less than 100 days, over 800,000 Tutsi and Hutu moderates are murdered, 1 million people are internally displaced, 2 million flee to other countries, and 95,000 children are orphaned. In the wake of the Rwandan genocide, Concern launches its biggest emergency response to date. This includes working over three years to reunite children with family members or foster parents. After the immediate needs are met, Concern remains in the country and works with families to build financial and food security through programmes like Graduation. 

The breakup of Yugoslavia leads to a series of ethnic conflicts and wars of independence throughout the Balkans. Among them is a 15-month war in Kosovo that leads to nearly 90% of Kosovar Albanians being displaced, including nearly 1 million forced to neighboring Albania and Macedonia.

While our work normally falls in Asia and Africa, Concern sends an assessment team to Albania on April 4, 1999 and works with both Kosovar refugees and internally-displaced Albanians. We soon move from Albania into Kosovo, providing humanitarian support to communities that sustained some of the worst damage as nearly 1 million displaced Kosovars return home over the span of a month.

Concern and partner Valid International pilot a new model for addressing childhood malnutrition during a famine in Ethiopia’s Hadiya and Wollaita zones. Initially called Community-Based Therapeutic Care (CTC), the programme brings treatment into communities rather than centralised care centres. Rather than feeding children with therapeutic milk at these centres, parents are able to get outpatient treatment through a ready-to-use therapeutic food often known as Plumpy’Nut.

On December 26, 2004, a 9.2-magnitude earthquake strikes off the coast of the Indonesian island of Sumatra, creating a tsunami with waves as high as 100 feet. It remains the deadliest natural disaster of the 21st century, killing nearly a quarter of a million people across 14 countries. Concern responds immediately in Indonesia and Sri Lanka, supporting 16,000 families hit hardest by the devastation. 

Originally developed in Bangladesh by the nonprofit BRAC in 2002, the Graduation Model proves to be a success for families sustainably beating poverty while starting their own businesses. It works across four pillars: social protection, livelihood development, financial inclusion, and social empowerment. 

In keeping with Concern’s methods of challenging tradition in order to find more effective ways of delivering aid and development support, Concern launches Innovations for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health with funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. 

The last decade begins with a 7.0-magnitude earthquake that strikes Haiti on January 12, 2010. Having been in the country for nearly 15 years, Concern springs into action. We roll out one of the largest emergency responses in our history within 48 hours, one that continues through a major cholera outbreak and Hurricane Tomas in the same year, as well as Hurricane Matthew in 2016. 

The aftermath of the Arab Spring protests in 2011 gives way to a conflict in Syria that leads to the largest refugee crisis in the world. Concern begins to respond in Syria — as well as with refugee communities in Iraq, Lebanon, and Türkiye — when displacement hits a peak in 2013. 

A single case confirmed in Guinea in March 2014 sparks history’s largest Ebola epidemic, which courses through Liberia, Sierra Leone, Nigeria and Senegal and kills over 11,000. Concern’s teams in Liberia and Sierra Leone are still working with communities to rebuild after recent civil wars, and are among the first to respond to the crisis. We curb the spread by developing a safe and dignified burial system.

Renewed violence in Myanmar’s Rakhine State displaces more than 1 million stateless Rohingya, many of whom seek shelter in neighbouring Bangladesh. They quickly form the largest refugee camp in the world near the city of Cox’s Bazar. Concern’s team is once again one of the first on the ground, providing emergency supplies, nutrition support, healthcare services, protection, and livelihoods programmes. 

Concern maintains its programmes and scales up response in the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic, adapting in-person programmes to social distancing and working with communities to spread awareness on prevention methods and symptoms. We also work to address the longer-term economic losses of the pandemic and coordinate vaccine roll-outs in countries where other epidemics are still a recent memory, including Liberia and Sierra Leone. 

Nearly overnight, the full-scale escalation of conflict in Ukraine creates one of the largest refugee and displacement crises and exacerbates humanitarian crises around the world due to supply chains and underfunding. Concern joins Alliance2015 partners Welthungerhilfe and CESVI in responding, first to the needs of Ukrainians arriving in Moldova and Poland, and soon moving into the country itself. 

Concern teams in Sudan are among those affected by the outbreak of civil war on April 15, 2023, which quickly becomes the largest humanitarian crisis in modern history. We pivot our work in the country to respond to the massive displacement and need created by conflict, and also support refugees and host communities in neighbouring Chad. 

Despite ongoing challenges and record-breaking crises, Concern remains guided by the simple yet powerful mandate from Fr. Aengus Finucane: “Do as much as you can, as well as you can, for as many as you can.”

With a global team of 4,700 humanitarians, we are reaching millions across 24 countries, and continue to look for ways to do more, for more people, at even higher levels of quality, care, and success.