Charity marks 50 years of fighting poverty

Helvetas has funded bridges such as this one in Nepal. Nepal Photo Gallery

The Swiss aid agency Helvetas has highlighted the lack of progress in the fight against world poverty, as it marks its 50th anniversary.

Since its foundation, the organisation has invested more than SFr1 billion ($800 million) to improve conditions in developing nations but admits this is just a “drop in the ocean”.

Speaking in Zurich this week, Helvetas secretary-general Werner Külling lamented that many of the charity’s initial hopes had not been realised.

“Living standards in developing countries have not improved over the past few decades,” he said.

According to Helvetas, which is also known as the Swiss Association for International Cooperation, 1.2 billion people around the world live in extreme poverty, two-thirds of them in rural areas.

It says 800 million people around the world suffer from malnutrition and more than a billion men and women do not have access to clean drinking water.

Yet despite the lack of progress, Külling insists that the charity’s work has made a meaningful difference to the lives of hundreds of thousands of people.

“In the face of huge challenges, our work is but a drop in the ocean. But it’s a drop that counts,” said Külling, who is stepping down after 32 years at the helm.

Last year Helvetas had a budget of SFr55 million, of which a record SFr12 million came from private donations. It is supported by 43,000 members and 40,000 sponsors, and is the biggest – and oldest – Swiss non-governmental organisation working in the field of development cooperation.

Poor rural areas

Since its inception, Helvetas has focused on poor rural areas and its priorities today remain the same. Over the past eight years its water projects have helped two million people. The NGO has also built 2,000 suspension bridges, mainly in Nepal, Bhutan and Ethiopia.

Helvetas launched its first aid project in 1956 in Nepal and today the Zurich-based charity is active in 22 nations across Africa, Asia and Latin America, employing around 50 Swiss experts abroad and 600 local staff. It plans to reduce the number of target countries to 15 over the next five years.

Current programmes include training veterinary assistants and young farmers in the Dominican Republic, preserving natural resources in the western highlands of Guatemala and organic-cotton promotion in Burkina Faso.

Apart from addressing the basic needs of citizens in partner countries, Helvetas also promotes values such as justice, equality, political freedom and peace.

Technical expertise

During its early days, Helvetas tended to send Swiss experts to manage development projects and to provide technical expertise on water distribution, bridge building and forestry. But since the 1980s, the agency has increasingly relied on support from local organisations.

Melchior Lengsfeld, who is taking over from Külling, says the NGO has had to adapt to the changing demands of developing countries who want a bigger say in how aid projects are run.

“To achieve long-term change, we are involving more and more regional and national institutions in our projects,” he said.

On the eve of taking up his new role, Lengsfeld warned the Swiss government of its responsibilities towards achieving the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, which include halving world poverty by 2015.

He said recent budget cuts in the area of development aid were a backward step at a time when Switzerland should be taking a more active role in the fight against poverty.

swissinfo with agencies

Key facts

Helvetas was founded on June 18, 1955.
It is the oldest, biggest and best-known private Swiss organisation for development cooperation.
Over the past 50 years, Helvetas has spent around SFr1 billion funding aid projects.
21% of its funding comes from private donations and international organisations and 64% from the government.
It employs 700 people in Switzerland and abroad.