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20 Years of Integral: Stronger Together

Doug Balfour, one of Integral’s founders and first Executive Director

Doug Balfour, one of Integral’s founders and first Executive Director, first had a vision to start a global alliance in 2002. In our 20th Anniversary film, he explains the ’phenomenal opportunity’ he saw in bringing different Christian relief and development agencies together. 

Integral started in 2004 and it was at the end of that year that a joint programme for responding to the tsunami in Indonesia, in Sri Lanka and in India was developed. Here Doug reflects further on Integral’s history and future:

What do you think has kept Integral going for the last 20 years?
I think the answer is simply that it has provided valid help and benefit to the Member organisations. The only reason that organisations are in any type of alliance or cooperative venture is that they feel that the benefit is worth more than the cost. When I listen to all that Integral has accomplished and all the disaster projects and collaborations that have happened over the years, you can see the enormous benefit of being together in an alliance.

What are your hopes for Integral as we go into the future?
It would be that we double down on all the things that have provided the competitive advantage to Integral in the international relief and development community, but also that we dig deeper. To explore the idea of having a stronger voice together and also do more cooperative work with other alliances and other networks in the Christian relief and development space.

What would you like to say to Integral Members as we look to the future?
The world is even more unstable geopolitically and will always need a strong, organised, non-competitive, relief-oriented alliance of highly professional, well motivated, faith-based providers. I believe that need is best answered by strong, trusting and complementary collaboration. The biggest take away from my career in international emergency aid is that smart, realistic, ambitious, pragmatic collaboration is more and more our real superpower! With it, and especially if we can get serious money to collaborate with us as well, we can truly transform situations and the lives of millions of people. I am sure the future will send us some real difficult curve balls or googlies (depending on your nationality and sport of choice!) so we need to be prepared and do the hard relational and preparation work now, so that we will not be found wanting later, when it really matters.

Click here to watch Integral’s 20th Anniversary Film