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Who we are?

We are Solidar Suisse, a Swiss non-profit organization which commits itself worldwide to decent work, democratic participation and humanitarian action. Solidar Suisse was founded by the Swiss Federation of Trade Unions and the Social Democratic Party as Swiss Labour Assistance in 1936. Our movement has been involved in international solidarity cooperation for more than 80 years. Thus we build on long experience and institutional expertise in both development cooperation and humanitarian action and public awareness raising within Switzerland. Still committed to our historical roots, we are driven by the struggle for a more just world.

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Stability to deliver impact via a number of projects (around 80 at the moment) operated in more than 20 countries, managed by approximately 200 staff in Solidar offices in 10 countries.

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We are organised as an association with a lean and efficient governance and a professional management. The bulk of our membership consists of collective members and several thousand single members. Solidar Suisse is a member of SOLIDAR, a European network of more than 60 Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) working to advance social justice in Europe and worldwide. We are a member of Alliance Sud, the Swiss alliance of many of the largest NGOs active in international Cooperation.

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Our international programmes achieved significant progress in key strategic objectives:

  1. Geographic re-orientation: The two Programmes in Serbia and Nicaragua were phased out including closure of our offices. More focus is now given to Sub-Sahara Africa and Asia, and within the programmes we regionalized our approach.

  2. From national to regional: Various programmes successfully transformed their programme set-up and started working across countries, most notably in Asia, Central America and Southeast Europe.

  3. Increased poverty and low-income country focus: we managed to significantly expand our programmes in Least Developed Countries / LDC with a main accent on Sub-Sahara Africa. Our programmes in West and Southern Africa were among the main drivers of our growth.

  4. Nexus: The two teams "Development Cooperation" and "Humanitarian Action" within the International Programmes Department have expanded their cooperation. In many programmes, the two approaches have merged into one nexus programme. While further work is required, strong progress has been made.

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