Solidar Suisse Southeast Europe

The experience of Solidar Suisse in Southeast Europe encompasses humanitarian operations after the wars in Bosnia and Herzegowina and Kosovo, Projects in Macedonia, Romania, Bulgaria and Serbia with the objective to reintegrate unemployed people in the world of labour, to strengthen social partnership and social dialogue and therewith the social net of benefits. From 2002 onwards, Solidar Switzerland has supported the worst-affected people in their efforts to secure a regular income or to improve their income from agriculture. In the dairy sector through joint strategies, dairy farmers and dairies should improve the conditions for dairy production in Kosovo and therefore increase profits and income in this sector. Solidar Suisse considers the guarantee of a certain social protection (social protection floor) as indispensable requirement for poverty reduction. In this context, Solidar Suisse has started to support the health reform process in Kosovo in 2012. Convinced that the reforms only will be sustainably successful if the civil society participates actively in the whole reform process, Solidar Suisse’s Kosana Project in Kosovo focuses mainly on the active, informed and reflected participation of the civil society in the setting up of Kosovo’s new health insurance scheme. Our focus on civil society does not exclude cooperation with other actors like public authorities, central or local governments etc. However we strongly believe that the beneficiaries of change should become actors of change. We therefore do everything to equip civil society actors with the means contribute actively to development.