Save the Children was originally founded in 1919 in England by Eglantyne Jeb and her sister Dorothy Buxton. The organization began as an offshoot of the 'fight the famine council', a group created to campaign against the Allied blockade of Germany and Austria-Hungary.
After WWI, the Save the Children fund was created to raise money to provide emergency aid to children suffering from shortages of food and supplies across Europe.
Oxfam was founded in 1942 in Oxford, as the "Oxford Committee for Famine Relief" it was originally formed by a group of Quakers, social activists and Oxford academics. They were one of several local committees formed in support of the 'national famine relief committee'.
Together their mission was to persuade the UK government to allow food relief through the Allied naval blockade to the starving citizens in Axis-occupied Greece.
Molly Bedingfield founded Global Angels together with her children in 2004. Molly had the idea, and formed the Global Angels board in 2003 and in December that year applied for charity status in the UK, by February 2004 they had received full charity status and became official.
The way Global Angels work is noticeably different in comparison to most other charities, the most important being that for every £1 they receive every penny of it goes directly to grass-roots projects.
The Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) was originally called 'the horticultural society of London' and was the idea of a man named John Wedgwood. Although he suggested his idea in 1800, it was not for another 4 years, until 1804, that the first meeting took place on the 7th March at Hatchards bookshop in Piccadilly, London.
Founded by Sir Joseph Banks and John Wedgwood the horticultural society of London's aim was to collect plant information and to encourage the improvement of horticultural practice.
Plan UK was founded in 1937 after John Langdon-Davis, a British war correspondent, and Eric Muggeridge, a refugee worker found a little boy named Jose.
This was during the Spanish civil war where it was thought as many as 11,000 refugees, many of them orphaned children, were passing through the railway station at Santander each day.
Cancer Research UK began on the 4th February 2002 with the merging of Cancer Research Campaign with the Imperial Cancer Research Fund. The idea behind Cancer Research UK is to fund the work of doctors and nurses throughout the UK who are researching cancer, and to fund laboratory research. Their vision 'Together we will beat cancer' is what they aspire for, and what they work towards.
Cancer Research UK carries out world class research to understand cancer and to find ways to prevent diagnose and treat different cancers. They also help people to understand cancer, and inform them of the choices they can make.
The NSPCC, 'National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children' originated in 1881, and is a UK based charity. On a trip to New York a businessman named Thomas Agnew visited the 'New York society for the prevention of cruelty to children'.
Agnew was so impressed by this that when he returned home he set up 'the Liverpool society for the prevention of cruelty to children', the Liverpool SPCC. Several towns and cities followed his example, the most notable being the London SPCC, set up in 1884.
UNICEF is a charity that was started on December 11th 1940 to help children all over Europe who were in need of help after World War II. UNICEF was developed in the early years of the UN, beginning with Great Britain, France, Russia and the USA and were originally called UNRRA, United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration.
By 1948 they were providing rations for 5 million children in 12 countries. Later that year they started the largest mass vaccination in the world, and by 1995 over 155 million children had been tested and 60 million children had been vaccinated against tuberculosis.
Christian Aid is a UK based charity that is supported and funded by Christian churches throughout the UK. It started after the second World War and was called Christian Reconstruction in Europe. Being set up to help with post war welfare, and to help in the settlement of the post war refugees.
They became part of the British Council of Churches who went on to become the Churches Together in Britain and Ireland in 1949. This changed in 1964 to Christian Aid.
The WWF, World Wildlife Foundation, was founded on September 11th 1961 in Switzerland. In 1986 they changed their name and are now known as 'the world wide fund for nature', but they decided to keep the original abbreviation as by this time it was well known throughout the world.
Today the WWF works in more than 90 countries supporting around 1300 conservation and environmental projects. The WWF is the world largest independent conservation organisation and their current strategy specifically focuses on restoring the population of 36 species.
CAFOD, the 'Catholic Agency For Overseas Development' is a UK based international agency that is working to alleviate poverty and suffering in developing countries. CAFOD was started on March 11th 1960 when Catholic women organized a 'family fast day' in order to raise money for a mother and baby program in Dominica.
That first year they raised £6,672 to help treat babies suffering from malnutrition. By 1962 the Catholic Bishops of England and Wales had set CAFOD up officially and developed the mission 'to promote human development and social justice in witness to the Christian faith and Gospel values'.
Action Aid was formed in 1972, and was originally set up as a child sponsorship program, in it's first year 88 UK supporters sponsored 88 children in Kenya and India. By 1984, they were helping over 40,000 children in Asia and Africa, and by 2007 they were helping over 25 million people in over 40 countries.
This program of sponsoring a child is still in use today and is one of the companies main projects. The sponsor a child program works by a person living in a developed nation paying money each month to pay for the child's education and other needs. Another great part of sponsoring is that the child and the sponsor can communicate via letters so people can truly see how they are helping to change someone's life.