Goals

Sustainable improvement

Our aim is to contribute to a sustainable improvement of the living conditions of needy children and young people in poor countries of Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Eastern Europe. This always includes an improvement of the social and socio political circumstances in which children and their families live.

Social work and development
In our view helping children and young people is both an expression of our Christian task and a contribution to the development process of the society concerned. The aim of the work is to contribute to the emergence of a more just society which opens up opportunities for a life in dignity to all its citizens. Our attention is centred on the weakest; the needy, exploited, abused, handicapped, orphaned, abandoned, and destitute children and young people. This help is administered irrespective of their sex, race, or religion. We want to work for the emergence of societies in which the strong help to uplift the weak and give them enough freedom to develop. Above all we wish to contribute by giving children and young people a life worth living.

The individual and his context
This always includes help to the individual person and his context. In this way we alleviate the needs of children and young people through direct support. At the same time we contribute to a change in the social context. The children and young people we support need sufficiently good chances for leading a life under their own responsibility. In this process we include their families and (village) communities as far as possible.

Education and other areas of work
Basic education plays a key role. It promotes the development of children and young people and it is a substantial instrument in the reduction of poverty. However, there is more to it than that. Further elements include, for example, preventive health care, practice oriented training and community development work.

National and international lobbying and campaigning
We are committed to the rights of children and young people and also address the causes of poverty. This is because the national and international framework decisively influences the liberty of action in individual countries. Only if the framework of social conditions changes, does poverty not keep on.

Moreover on the part of our partners and in industrial nations campaigning and lobbying are of great importance in order to point out the causes of poverty and press for effective ways to overcome them. All of these measures must work together if more just structures are to be created. Then present poverty will be eased and further poverty will be reduced.