After five years, German Development Service DED hands over  its program of “Support of Civil Society Structures” into local hands. The Council of Churches in Namibia (CCN) will be the new partner for Bread of the World (BftW), a German-based NGO that further funds the program.
During the DED involvement, more than 25 non-governmental orga-nisations have been supported, the majority of them focusing on abused women and children, orphans or people affected and infected by HIV/AIDS. The program aimed on stabilizing the organisational structures, train the staff members in management skills and bookkeeping as well as identifying funding bodies and fundraising or income generating possibilities for their work.Altogether the German Development Cooperation granted about N$ 3 million NAM to the various organisations. This money was used for capacity building purposes such as training courses, for the project activities of the organisations as well as for salary contributions for 15 local experts who worked directly as coordinator or manager for the respective NGOs.
DED program coordinator Mrs. Marianne Woeller summarizes the DED engagement: “The program has been really successful. Many of the organisations we supported are stable in their funding now and some of them today are even regarded as leading umbrella organisations in Namibia.”At the official hand-over ceremony, held on Wednesday in Windhoek, German Ambassador Freiherr Arne von Kittlitz, congratulated the CCN as the successor of the program. He emphasised on the responsibility of supporting civil society structures: “I can only underline that a strong civil society is a key component of a strong nation. Without encouraged people like you, who address deplorable state of affairs and take care of those, who cannot always help themselves, a nation can not develop, it can not grow to a better place for its people and it can not provide safety for all its inhabitants.”
The new BftW – CCN cooperation will continue to fund several of the organisations that have been in the DED program and further strengthen NGOs and therewith civil society structures in Namibia

German Ambassador Arne Freiherr von Kittlitz congratulates Dr. Henry Platt, Vice President of the Council of Churches in Namibia CNN for taking over the work from DED program coordinator Mrs Marianne Woeller. Standing behind her is Achim Mortier, Country Director of the DED German Development Service.