Menschen für Menschen Switzerland is focused on stopping impoverishment in towns and rural areas and on creating livelihood opportunities.
There are several ways you can help people in Ethiopia. Here you will find all donations with concrete examples.
Cradle of humanity, country of origin of coffee, rich culture and poor families. Over 100 million people live here: A visit to a contradictory country.
Karlheinz Böhm (†2014) at a project meeting in Ethiopia.
Ethiopia’s population continues to grow rapidly. The development of agriculture is not keeping pace with this. Many people have to leave their villages out of necessity. They are stranded without prospects in the slums of the cities. The goal of Menschen für Menschen Switzerland is, therefore, to create good living conditions in cities and in rural areas: people should find a decent living in their homeland.
The growing cities also bring economic and social opportunities. This is what our foundation wants to promote. We support individuals, groups, and communities to find the most efficient solutions to their most pressing problems. Sustainability is always decisive. The projects are organised in such a way that they do not create dependency: Menschen für Menschen enables the population to help themselves.
Our foundation works in close partnerships with local non-governmental organizations. These must demonstrate competence in already successfully completed social and development projects. In order to avoid faulty planning, we are in constant contact with the local and regional authorities.
At the beginning of our projects, there is always an analysis of living conditions and needs at the intervention site. On the basis of this analysis, various program components are linked in such a way that the donations can be used as efficiently and sustainably as possible. For example, in rural areas, we combine agricultural training with drinking water supply and in cities, access to sanitation with commercial support for poor communities. We closely follow the projects through standardised monitoring and evaluation in order to quickly correct any challenges and adapt these to our ongoing projects while at the same time include lessons learned for future activities.
Menschen für Menschen Switzerland sees itself as a learning organisation. New insights from science and development cooperation flow into our strategy and projects.
We base the majority of our projects where a lot problems accumulate in several areas of life. We are there where the environment has been largely destroyed or where the negative effects of urbanisation are particularly harsh; where many people are forced to live in degrading conditions to find work; where many people live under the poverty line (particularly women, children and the displaced). We also set up projects in areas where the possibilities for sustainable improvements are greatest.
Our projects have to include a strategy for the withdrawal of the foundation from a project area. This phasing out process must include a mechanism that enables the local people to achieve a smooth transition to an independent life without our help.
In terms of scope, we focus on all our core issues wherever they are most urgently needed or where the cost-benefit ratio is at its highest. We consider that best practices should be demonstrated our projects and project areas for the dissemination of the methods and techniques used and for sustainability.
We cooperate with experienced non-governmental organisations, which have already demonstrated their competence. Local institutions, such as the agricultural department and experts in municipalities as well as the health bureau or the water sector offices, are integrated into our projects. We continue to plan and implement with their staff, as these institutions will continue the work together with the communities after our withdrawal.
We support projects that produce solid baseline information or plan it in as an activity, and which provide a monitoring system so that the results can be checked using good indicators. The experts at Menschen für Menschen Switzerland must be able to supervise and support the projects effectively. Our values must be apparent in all projects and have to be accessible to anyone who is interested. Our results are regularly documented, reviewed, evaluated and improved.
When projects are completed we evaluate them in terms of quality and scope with the help of external experts. We want to establish whether we have achieved our objectives and, above all, evaluate the positive impact on the life of the people. The results of this evaluation are integrated into our project strategy and used for future project planning.
Here you can visit our projects:
Projects
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