In cooperation with…

Some of you have probably already noticed the banner to the right and figured out what I am just about to tell you. But here it goes anyway. All is pretty much good to go with the development organisation that we will be raising money for. We feel enormously fortunate to be able to do this trip and we want to give something back to the people we meet along the way. We decided to try and do this by raising money to an organisation that is operating in Africa. A percentage of all the sponsorship funds we gain will go to the organisation and we’re also inviting anyone amongst our families and friends to donate, however big or small the amount may be.

I started going through the development organisations here in Sweden and I put up some critera for the one we wanted to cooperate with. I wanted it to be big enough to be well established and reliable but not so big that it feels like your money disappears into a dark void without really reaching the men, women and children it was aimed for. I wanted it to be religiously and politically independent. And, for quite obvious reasons, it would be nice if the organisation was operating in at least some of the countries we will be passing through – and especially Zimbabwe and Moçambique to which we have closer connections. I also wanted the organisation to have a Swedish branch so that there would be an office to go and visit and real people to speak to about this.

It turned out, as I went through organisation after organisation, that, however great their work is, not many of the Swedish ones live up to all of these criteria. At the end there was only one actually – but looking closely at it I realised I could have picked it from the start, because it just felt so right.

We will be raising money for the organisation Kooperation Utan Gränser, or Swedish Cooperative Centre (SCC) as it’s called internationally. It is a politically and religiously independent organisation that have been operating in Africa (and Europe and South America and Asia, but the main focus is Africa) for several decades. What I appreciate most about this organisation is their attitude, how they build their projects from a long-term perspective and try to give poor people the tools they need so that they can work their way out of it themselves. I believe a lot of the African countries have gotten money pushed down their throats by the Western world for some time now without having to lift a finger, and if it continues like that, the future for Africa doesn’t look that bright, I think.

Read more about this on the charity project page, or on the organisation’s website!