ARC Named One Of America's 100 Best Charities

American Refugee Committee
Wednesday, 5 December 2001

The American Refugee Committee, an international humanitarian aid organization with headquarters in Minneapolis, has been named one of "America's 100 Best Charities" by Worth Magazine in its December 2001 issue.

The magazine said it had investigated hundreds of charities and interviewed dozens of philanthropy experts before compiling its list, approaching the project "as if our own money were at stake."

It included ARC in its list of top "relief and development" organizations, saying all of its choices in this category work effectively with other groups on the scene, focus tightly on their missions and involve local leaders in program design and implementation. The article noted that $89 of every $100 of ARC's revenues is spent on its programs.

"We are honored to be considered one of America's best charities," said Mary Tjosvold, chair of ARC's board of directors and chief executive officer of Mary T. Inc in Coon Rapids, MN.

"This is a tribute to our hard-working staff across the world, many of them displaced persons themselves, who have helped us to design such effective programs to give vulnerable people a chance to survive and to rebuild their lives."

ARC was founded in 1978 to help refugees of the conflicts in Southeast Asia. It has since expanded to assist millions of people uprooted by war, civil unrest or other disaster across the world.

During emergencies, ARC provides health care and other vital services. But recognizing that it takes years for displaced persons to rebuild their lives, it also offers "transition" services such as shelter repair, vocational training, literacy classes, legal aid, counseling, repatriation assistance, and reproductive health and HIV/AIDS education.

With a 2001 budget of about $26 million, ARC now operates in Europe (Bosnia, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia); Africa (Democratic Republic of the Congo, Guinea, Liberia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone and Sudan); and Asia (Thai-Myanmar border).

ARC is also planning to launch a program to help Afghan refugees in Iran return home and has sent a team to Pakistan to assess ways to treat the high incidence of tuberculosis among Afghan refugees there. In the 1980s, ARC was instrumental in developing an internationally recognized tuberculosis mitigation and treatment program for refugees.

Over the years, ARC has assisted uprooted people from countries ranging from Cambodia and Laos to Ethiopia, Somalia and Mozambique. Through its pioneering Regional Linkages program, ARC has played a key role in helping people who were displaced by the ethnic conflicts in the former Yugoslavia to return to their prewar communities.

For more information, or to contact American Refugee Committee, see their website at: www.archq.org