WHAT comes to mind when we think about Christmas?

The images that form in our head are of presents piled under a Christmas tree, bright twinkling lights, holly and decorations, and a table laden with festive food.

But for Christians, Christmas is a time to remember. To remember the story of people under pressure offering hospitality in the little space they had. To remember a refugee family escaping the threat of death; to remember a fragile newborn baby who would bring hope to an uncertain world.

I have been thinking a lot recently about this unstoppable power of hope.

Earlier this year I became the Chair of Christian Aid, the international development and humanitarian agency of the British and Irish churches and member of global church-based organisation ACT Alliance.

As of next year, Christian Aid will have been fighting poverty and injustice for 80 years. In that time, we have partnered with communities and organisations across the world, to support people of every faith and belief.

Throughout those decades, hope has compelled Christian Aid to stand up for communities in crisis and to support people living in poverty. Right now, we all need hope more than ever. From the climate crisis to the tragic events unfolding across the world, from Gaza to Ukraine and South Sudan, we need to offer hope to communities in crisis.

STORIES of hope too often go untold. Yolanda Leon can tell such a story. After three hours on a bumpy country road, I met her at her home, deep in the mountains of Santander, Colombia.

After an amazing home-cooked breakfast of potato broth and arepas [flatbread made from cornmeal], Yolanda showed us around her agroecology vegetable garden and farm. She shared with us the different techniques passed down through generations, supported by Christian Aid’s local partner, Corambiente.

Suddenly, under a tree bearing abundant avocados, she started laboriously to pull up a plant, which turned out to be turmeric. “To take to my mum and aunt’s house,” she said.

Women’s agricultural production is primarily focused on improving the diet that they and their family consume. However, they also produce a surplus that they sell to the Mankka market. The profit is theirs, and this has given the women a level of autonomy within the family and community.

Yolanda was just one of the many partners I met in Colombia on my first international trip with Christian Aid. Thanks to the generosity of Christian Aid supporters, our partners are helping women to take up leadership roles in their communities.

I left with an overriding feeling of hope. Why? Because I know the future of Colombia is safe in the hands of our partners and those women.

But this can only happen with the right approach. An approach that is about shifting power, money, and decision-making to local communities.

WITH Christian Aid’s 80th anniversary year just around the corner, I find myself asking: What do I hope 2025 will bring? I know what Christian Aid’s mantra must be: Why us? Why not local leadership?

The truth is, we are changing. As we seek to live up to our values, there are plenty of areas where we still need to improve, and this is one significant shift we are ready to make.

In the future, responding to the power of the prophetic voice, I can see us playing more of a convening, connecting, and catalytic role, linking the local to the global and supporting wider movements for change.

This will require more of the capacity and capability we have built up inside Christian Aid to be located in our partners, creating opportunities to shift power to people living in poverty, so that they can make their voices heard and create their own opportunities for a life free from poverty. It will mean measuring our effectiveness by how we tackle the climate crisis and poverty, and how we support the most marginalised, rather than by any financial scale.

Might that create some uncertainties? Yes. But then I think again of Christmas. I remember that the circumstances into which the Christ-child was born were full of risk and uncertainty. Yet that birth, in those circumstances, represents the hope that God has for us. An unstoppable hope that can’t be conquered by war, disease, poverty, or death. In the power of that hope, I know how much we, our partners, and people with Yolanda’s determination, can achieve.

The Rt Revd Sarah Mullally is the Bishop of London and the Chair of Christian Aid.