Samaritans
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Governance and history

How it all started

Samaritans was started in 1953 in London by a young vicar called Chad Varah, who worked in the city parish of St Stephen, Walbrook in the City. During his career he had offered counselling to his parishioners, and he increasingly wanted to do something specific to help people in distress who had no one to turn to.

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Why Samaritans started

A message from Chad Varah, founder of Samaritans, describing how and why the organisation began.

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Governance

The way Samaritans is governed is laid down in the Memorandum of Association and Articles of Association that were adopted at an Extraordinary General Meeting (EGM) held in January 2006.

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