Our Development Projects

The Karl Kübel Stiftung, headquartered in Germany, is engaged in development work with a focus on poverty reduction and education

Pupils learn hygiene practices with materials suitable for children. © Karl Kübel Stiftung

Pupils learn hygiene practices with materials suitable for children. © Karl Kübel Stiftung

Basically, we co-operate with charitable, non-profit grassroot-level organisations in our selected partner countries. These are at present India, the Philippines, Nepal, Myanmar, Ethiopia, Tanzania and Kosovo. At present we are supporting 55 projects in our partner countries. The focus of our development cooperation lies on India, with 34 projects. This focus has developed from the close personal contacts of our founder Karl Kübel (1909-2006) with India in the 1960s.

Our development work in India, as in our other partner countries, first of all aims to combat poverty, especially in the disadvantaged rural areas, and to provide the small farming families there with an adequate income. Education as the elementary basis for self-development and as a basic human right as well as integral part of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) has special importance in our work.

Reducing Social Inequalities

Our projects mainly focus on disadvantaged groups like indigenous people or day labourers. Women and the girl child, still widely neglected and discriminated in society, also get special attention and recognition in our work, particularly by the establishment of women's self-help groups. The project activities also aim to reduce social inequalities and strengthen civil society.

In our WASH-project (Water, Sanitation and Hygiene) for example, at 46 schools in the Indian state Tamil Nadu, girls learn how to manage their menstrual issues in daily life and get support like separate restrooms for girls at school. Previously, every fifth girl had been dropping out school at the start of puberty because she didn’t know how to manage the taboo of menstruation. As a consequence of our hygiene training, the girls now continue school once they reach puberty and therefore receive the same educational opportunities as boys.

Projects Are Based on Direct Needs of Local Communities

The initiative for a project is to be taken by the local partner organisation, in consultation with the target groups. It should always be driven by the needs of marginalised and deserving communities. Enabling parents to secure the basic needs of their children, such as food, health, education, shelter, as well as value orientation towards a community-based and driven holistic development, should be focused. The programmes in general do have preventive character.

We support self-help measures only as long as it is actually necessary to do so. All projects are locally anchored in order to achieve sustainable effects after the completion of a project. The duration of the projects varies. It can be three years or up to ten years.

The majority of our projects are co-financed by public funding agencies. We must guarantee the public funding agencies that the professional planning of the project, the implementation, the reporting and the accounting will be assured.  Furthermore, we consider ourselves to be a liaison between the interests of our partner organisations, the public and the political stakeholders.

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