Organisation of the Month: SOS Malta

SOS Malta came into being in 1991, after the tragic exodus of Albanian refugees to the shores of Italy and Malta. Throughout the 1990's SOS Malta was active in Albania and Kosovo, working in Palliative Care, Education, and Community Development. In 2004, SOS Malta formed part of the Malta Tsunami Humanitarian Mission to Sri Lanka, where it set up a fully operational clinic in Matara, Sri Lanka, offering immediate medical relief to over 3000 persons. The SOS Malta medical team also visited local displaced people in the camps to offer medical aid and other essential commodities. SOS Malta also sought to provide recovery and sustainable livelihood assistance, and managed to help over 600 families in various villages by rebuilding their income-generating activities.

In recent years, SOS Malta has focused its long term development interventions on aspects of water-related poverty, livelihoods and food security within countries like India, Sri Lanka and Uganda. In 2009, SOS Malta, began to work in Uganda for the first time with the support of Malta's Official Development Assistance. SOS Malta implemented a rainwater harvesting (RWH) project as an entry point to community development in the Masaka District of Namagoma, Uganda. In 2014, SOS Malta has begun a project focused on youth empowerment and employment setting up a training centre in integrated agriculture and candle making for young unemployed people in the district to enable income generation and food security for the future. These young people will be equipped with practical and informal skills such as leadership to enable them to set up their own trade and cooperatives. and secure a future for their families.

SOS Malta also seeks to raise awareness about development issues in Malta. Since 2002, SOS Malta promoted initiatives aimed at creating awareness about the Millennium Development Goals and development issues. SOS Malta has been involved in a number of EU Funded European Level Development education projects as well as engaging in dialogue and awareness raising on development issues at national level.

For more information about the various humanitarian, development and development education projects which SOS Malta has been involved in, please see www.sosmalta.org

Photo: SOS Malta, First Trainees Recruited for the project "Youth Engage Building Skills and Creating Opportunities for Young people in Uganda" Best .

Information provided by SKOP, Maltese development NGDO platform