Freiburg (dpa) – Last year, the Catholic aid organization Caritas collected more than twice as many donations as in the previous year and was able to help more people than ever. Donors gave around 89.5 million euros, the aid organization reported on Wednesday in Freiburg. In 2020 it was 36.7 million euros. In total, more than 640 projects in almost 80 countries were funded with almost 100 million euros, said the President of the German Caritas Association, Eva Maria Welskop-Deffaa. In total, more than 6 million people in need benefited. Never before had so many people been helped, never before had so much money been entrusted to Caritas, said Welskop-Defaa.
“The Ukraine crisis triggered the biggest wave of donations we’ve ever had,” said Oliver Müller, head of Caritas Germany. With a view to the current year, the willingness of donors to help with non-earmarked donations has not diminished, rather a positive trend can be observed.
The organization is more worried than ever about the multitude of conflicts and disasters worldwide. Hunger, civil wars, the climate crisis and also Covid-19 and the Ukraine war are depressing issues that are further aggravating the plight of millions of people, said Müller.
Well over 800 million people worldwide suffer from hunger or are undernourished; 48 million people are currently just one step away from starvation. “We are dealing with a hunger crisis that we have not had for a long time and perhaps never before,” he said.
© dpa-infocom, dpa:220713-99-06621/2
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