Sustainable help
In the digital age, the world has shrunk into a village. People are closer than ever. Genuine development aid is development cooperation. Assistance from industrialized countries to developing countries must not only be financial, but should also include cultural exchange and help people to help themselves.
Principle of partnership
The lives of people in need in developing countries are characterized by abject poverty, hunger and disease, illiteracy, unemployment and debt bondage. Millions of children cannot go to school because they have to work at home. Millions of street children keep themselves alive by begging and stealing. Emmaus Children's Relief encourages these people to improve their plight in all areas of life themselves. It supports them with advice and financial resources. Our help for self-help is based on the principle of partnership: we work closely with partners in Switzerland and in the Third World. Here and there, authorities, aid organizations, the target groups and the local population are involved according to their capabilities. The projects are managed and implemented by local people, as they know the local conditions inside out.
Sustainable help
Our concrete help is not a drop in the ocean, it brings many people a new, dignified life. The disabled or unemployed man, the widow who prostitutes herself to feed her children, the girl in the orphanage or the street boy who ekes out a living by stealing: For them, our partnership support means an opportunity.
CHF 1.65 per day
is needed so that a child in need can be cared for and educated.
CHF 150.–
is the cost of a sewing machine that enables a mother or adult daughter to earn a living.
CHF 300.- to 500.-
is the price of a small or large dairy cow that provides a family with meaningful employment and a regular small income.
CHF 300.- to 2500.-
is what a family needs to repair their hut that has been damaged or destroyed by fire or bad weather, or to replace it with a weatherproof house (the price difference exists because the state does not always contribute).
CHF 500.–
is the cost of a store with healthy food for a widow or a disabled person.
CHF 2000.- to 4000.-
are needed to build a well to irrigate the land of several families so that they can also grow crops in the dry season.
CHF 5000.- to 8000.-
is needed to build a classroom, a prerequisite for providing many rural children with a good education.
1976: View of the knitting workshop at the "San Francisco de Asis" social center in Medellin (Colombia), where destitute girls are trained.
1983: A school class with sponsored children in the Tollygunge orphanage in Calcutta (India), where around 70 girls and boys are cared for.
1991: We build a secondary school with a large well in Pavithiram (India). The vital water benefits the 1000 schoolchildren and the surrounding rural population.
1992: We build 25 brick houses in Canoor (India). In the background are the old mud huts with their water-permeable thatched roofs.
1995: In Dandeli (India), we finance the construction of 10 day nurseries. Around 20 children of working mothers are cared for in each day nursery.
1999: The elementary school "Little Kings Matriculation School" in Mangadu (India), completed after two years of construction. It has space for seven classes with several hundred children.
2002: In the "Hogares del Espíritu Santo" home in Buenos Aires (Argentina), which we have been supporting since 1975, computer science is also taught.
2010: The aid organization "Association MIMA VAO" in Antananarivo (Madagascar) runs a children's home in which we have looked after 92 sponsored children to date. We finance a chicken farm with 400 animals.
2011: At the "Centre St. Joseph" social center in Gonaives (Haiti), 700 schoolchildren receive a hot meal at lunchtime - often the only one they get all day.
2012: The parents of 18-year-old godson Vijay Kumar G. (back) in Secunderabad (India) are agricultural day laborers and often unemployed. We give them a dairy cow and calf.
2017: Ms. Elisabeth G. receives fabric and an umbrella for her market stall in La Paz (Bolivia) so that she can sell her own sewn goods.
2019: We provide Mr. Anil Kumar N. and his wife in Bapatla (India) with a wooden market stall with which they sell fruit.
