Church's Auxiliary for Social Action

Church's Auxiliary for Social Action or CASA (founded in 1947) is a non-religious Indian development organisation and charitable trust based in New Delhi and a service wing of the National Council of Churches in India comprising the Orthodox and Protestant Church Societies in India. CASA is a member of ACT Alliance^[1]

Church's Auxiliary for Social Action

Company type	Charity
Industry	NGO
Founded	1947, India
Headquarters	Registered office: New Delhi Zonal offices: Chennai, Kolkata, Mumbai, Sector offices: Guwahati, Imphal, Aizawl, Dimapur, Shillong, Bhubaneshwar, Ranchi, Lucknow, Indore, Raipur, Udaipur, Nagapattinam, Cuddalore, Tirunelveli, Alapuzha, Bapatla, Port Blair and Shimla
Key people	Busi Suneel Bhanu (Chairperson), Sushant Agarwal (Director)
Number of employees	500
Website

Mar Aprem Mooken writes,^[2]

Jawaharlal Nehru, the Prime Minister of India at the time of partition, asked the Christian community to assist in the work among the refugees, which the community readily responded through the National Council of Churches in India.

Genesis

The partition of India played a virtual havoc with peoples lives which Jawaharlal Nehru,^[3] then Prime Minister of India wanted to address and shared it with J. Waskom Pickett and Marshall Russell Reed who involved the National Council of Churches in India (NCCI) to lend a hand in mitigating the suffering of the displaced people for which the NCCI formed an ad hoc Relief Committee. Over the years', the Relief Committee took different names,

• 1947, Refugee and Famine Relief Committee or Central Relief Committee,^[4]
• 1955, Committee on Relief and Gift Supplies (CORAGS),^[5]
• Christian Agency for Social Action,^[6]
• (present) Church's Auxiliary for Social Action.

Funding

As a development non-religious organisation the activities of CASA are funded through the individuals, the Churches in India, the State, the corporates and a few overseas ecumenical bodies.^[3]

List of Directorships[7] (Period, Name of the Director )

1947-1947 - Dr. E. C. Bhatty 1947-1948 - Dr. E. D. Lucas 1949-1951 - Dr. Donald Ebright 1952-1956 - Dr. Donald Rugh 1956-1957 - Mr. Ranjit Chetsingh 1957-1958 - Rev. Edward Benedict 1958-1961 - Mr. J. S. S. Malelu 1962-1966 - Capt. Alexander Jethro 1966-1971 - Mr. Stephen Mathai 1971-1971 - Mr. Idrak Bhatty 1971-1972 - Mr. H. B. Kadambavanam 1972-1974 - Mr. S. Ponraj 1974-1975 - Mr. T. S. Francis 1975-1977 - Mr. P. C. Joseph 1977-2001 - Maj. J. K. Michael 2001-Present - Dr. Sushant Agrawal

Programmatic interventions

CASA's approach to development could be put in the following way,^[8] The Cross Cutting Thematic Areas of CASA’s programmatic interventions are : 1. Humanitarian Aid 2. Development Initiatives to address Structural Poverty 3. Gender Mainstreaming 4. Climate Change 5. Local Capacities for Peace and 'Do No Harm'