Quaker Service Sweden is a small, conscientious and effective service organisation that sends all donated funds to the specific projects it supports. Everyone involved in Quaker Service Sweden’s fund-raising and project administration activities are volunteers. The organisation comes under the auspices of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in Sweden and its financial accounts are audited by a qualified chartered accountant. As far as possible we try to secure SIDA-support (Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency) for our projects so that we can send up to ten times the money collected from donors to the project recipients. In recent years we have been able to send 600-700,000 SEK ($80-90,000) per year to the supported projects. For more information see our annual report for 2010 here.

Bangladesh is one of the world’s poorest countries. Quaker Service Sweden has been supporting Sabalamby Unnayan Samity (the Bengali equivalent of “organisation for self-help”) since 1994. SUS was founded in 1985 by a local teacher who, together with ten other like-minded people, was determined to create a better future for the country’s women and children. SUS is based in north-east Bangladesh, in the district of Netrakona, a rural area of around 2.4 million inhabitants. To date SUS been able to establish self-help projects in about 45 % of the district.

One of Quaker Service Sweden’s first initiatives was to help SUS to build a Model Farm to provide local training in organic cultivation, compost-making and the production of domestic gas from manure. A heritage seed bank has also been created for the collection of hardy rice varieties and other crops for demonstration and distribution purposes. The project has now also been expanded to include training in aquaculture (paddy-cum-fish culture).

Quaker Service Sweden has continued to support SUS’ work with extremely poor people in the different villages around Netrakona. This works is based on an integrated approach that includes the provision of basic education, helping the poor to become economically self-supporting by means of micro-finance, organising training courses to prevent violence against women and to create better relations between the sexes, helping to combat disease, providing pre-natal and post-natal care, educating women about health issues, and organising human rights groups and training. SUS has also built a hospital for the very poor and a sheltered home for vulnerable and battered women. Our contributions mean that SUS can carry out and continue to develop their work with the extreme poor.

In Burundi, Quaker Service Sweden first supported conflict management and reconciliation initiatives following the violent struggles between the different ethnic groups in Rwanda and Burundi. We also helped Quakers in Burundi to build a Peace School (opened in 1999). Since then we have supported their initiatives to develop a vocational school for both boys and girls. Our most recent support has been to help Burundi Quakers establish and develop training in organic farming methods and production, and thereby help to improve food production in the country as a whole. Training is carried out in cooperatives, where everyone – regardless of gender and ethnicity – takes part. This also contributes to a long-term reconciliation process. In addition, land that was either neglected or destroyed as a result of the internal conflicts is now being reclaimed and cultivated, while terracing and other cultivation methods ensure the efficient use of the country’s limited water resources.

Local Quakers have been running a nursery school in a refugee camp in Ramallah, on the West Bank, since the 1970s, financed through donated funds. Over the years European Quakers have taken a major responsibility for the financing of this project. The Quaker Meeting House in Ramallah also functions as a local peace centre in work for a sustainable future.
Gaza: Quaker Service Sweden has been sending ear-marked contributions direct to Norway’s Quaker Service Committee, which for the past 15 years has assumed responsibility for 13 nursery schools in the area, catering for a total of 1,700 children. As a result of the recent war, the need for reconstruction and trauma-counselling/healing has increased dramatically.

In St Petersburg, interested Quakers engage locally with autistic youngsters (Emelja Project). In Russia, obtaining national or local government support for rehabilitation work like this is almost impossible. The group is led by trained staff and the goal is to support the young people so that they can become independent, happy and confident people. Our seed-project – aimed at providing seeds for the cultivation of food and vegetables on allotments – is continuing.

We are grateful for every single contribution we receive because it allows us to continue to help others through:

• Help to self-help.
• Supporting projects that already at the planning stage involve and help the targeted groups and individuals.
• Allowing people to come to a deeper understanding and practice of their own religion, whatever this might be.
• Transferring values based on love, solidarity and mutual responsibility to the communities in which we work and having a humanistic approach to the problems of our time.
• Ensuring that the project can be accomplished in reasonable time at local level and that all involved will eventually become self-sufficient.

Quaker Service Sweden
Box 9166
102 72 Stockholm
Tel +46 73 0536652 (Gerhard Vitek, Convenor), +46 175 604 25 (Tofte Frykman, Treasurer)
Email: kvakarhjalpen@kvakare.se
Swedish Postgiro Account No: 30 39 01-3