Introduction

The OED is one of the major non- governmental organizations in Austria providing finanical support for development projects. Its development work is based on Christian principles summarized in the statement: "True development must be focused on the total individual human being as well as on the whole of humankind." Development efforts include both the financial and professional support of projects in the south as well as educational work in the northern industrialized countries.

Priority Regions

One principle of the OED is to focus its resources on a relatively small number of partner countries to achieve the best results for development with limited resources. Therefore the following list gives an overview in which countries the OED is currently operating:

Major Objectives

As a Christian orientated organization the OED the main goal is to

• combat poverty in partner countries,
• to improve living conditions of underprivileged groups of people and classes of society
• to eradicate social, racist and sexist discrimination

It is a precondition that the co-operation process is determined by target groups and partner organizations to meet the need of the local population.

Project Finance

In the recent years OED has increased its level of project funding. The main sources of finance are the Austrian Government, the European Union and other donors. In 1997 this amounted to more then 4 Mio. US $, out of which more than 3 Mio. US $ came from the Austrian Government, about US $ 860000 from private groups, individuals and organization donors and a share of about US $ 190000 from the European Union.

Country selection criteria:

• historically based connections
• which are considered to be the poorest and most disadvantaged country
• political situation and stability to guarantee the development of the project and safety of development of workers
  
  

Selection criteria for programmes/projects:

• the request for co-operation must come from target groups and partner organizations, these target groups and local institutions/organizations are then involved in the whole planning, impementation and evaluation process of the project.
• Participation in programmes which fit into the framework of local, regioanl or countrywide concepts always have priority over individual projects. Individual projects can be positive if they fit into the development policy or if they have immediate positive effects on other relevant sectors.

Addresses