The Salvation Army

The Salvation Army is a Christian social services organisation founded in 1865 in London by the Methodist preacher William Booth and his wife Catherine Booth. Originally named The Christian Mission, it was renamed in 1878. The organisation preaches the gospel of Jesus Christ while providing social services to poor, homeless, hungry and destitute people without discrimination, a mission that began with Booth taking the gospel directly to the streets rather than to a conventional church pulpit.

Its work spans several service lines. Food assistance programmes serve more than 183 million meals a year. Emergency shelter provision accounts for over 10 million nights of lodging annually. Direct financial assistance reaches more than 1.5 million households. The organisation also runs disaster relief operations responding to emergencies and disasters, addiction rehabilitation and recovery programmes, and community development work in local communities.

Operationally, The Salvation Army is present in more than 100 countries and runs more than 7,400 centres of operation, serving nearly 28 million Americans each year in the United States alone. Its work relies heavily on volunteer participation; more than 1,000 volunteers joined within a decade of its founding.