INTERPRETATIONS, IDEAS, INITIATIVES
The Hanns Seidel Foundation is making a bold attempt to interpret the modern world and to make it more comprehensible. While this is not sufficient to solve the problems, they at least become easier to survey and to grasp, and perhaps become a little less threatening.
Climate changes, the ozone gap, the population explosion and the enormous amount of catching up to do in the Third World, in terms of energy, all demand action on the part of mankind. The constant increases in industrialization, great mobility, and also growing personal demands are occurring at the expense of our limited resources of raw materials and are jeopardizing the environment more than at any other time in the past. At the same time, orientation is becoming more and more difficult; the individual cannot keep pace with the rapid changes in values and standards, with the predatory competition in the economy and the world of labor, and in the tension between tradition and progress in a complex world.
A constant competition of ideas and initiatives, if all concerned think and act globally, increases the chance of developing realistic visions. Feasible solutions, not illusions nor utopias. In this respect, growth at the expense of future generations is not progress, and progress is not an end in itself, but a means to an end - an option for the younger generation to determine its own life tomorrow in liberty and security, and under its own responsibility.
INSTITUTE FOR INTERNATIONAL CONTACT AND COOPERATION
Established in 1977, HSF initiated its first development aid program in Togo, Africa. Today, the African continent continues to constitute the focal point of HSF's activities, where half of HSF's programs are being carried out (49%).
In the Hanns Seidel Foundation's concept of development policy, strengthening social factors is regarded as just as important as promoting social-political structures. This means improving, strengthening, and utilizing human capacities, taking into account the social, political, cultural, and economic framework of the country in question. Promoting a democratic community feeling while preserving traditions which deserve to be preserved are among the principles of the Hanns Seidel Foundation's development cooperation. All the projects are designed in such a way that the countries or the party organizations can take them over themselves in the course of time.
Helping people to help themselves.
Industrialized nations and developing countries are parts of a single world. This is truer today than ever before. This means that we can only tackle the future together. Just social and economic frameworks, stability of the law and division of power are the cornerstones of more just political, social, and economic development, which is more than purely humanitarian aid, namely promoting political stability and economic efficiency in the Third World.
Activating self-help and individual initiative is our approach and our task for the future.
With 41 employees in the Munich headquarters and 62 employees abroad, HSF is managing 72 projects worldwide (as of 1994). Following Africa, the next largest region in terms of the number of HSF activities is Asia and the South Pacific (26%), followed by Latin America (17%), the Muslim world and Israel (17%) and Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe (10%).
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