By IPS Correspondents
OSLO, Nov 9 2000 (IPS)

The media can play a crucial role in supporting development co-operation between the rich industrial nations and the poorer countries.

This is underscored by a promotion carried out by the Norwegian television every year in aid of a non-profit or humanitarian organisation.

This year’s campaign was directed at helping the ‘SOS Children’s Villages’ – an organisation founded by the Austrian Herman Gmeiner in 1949.

From a small European post-war initiative the organisation has grown to a world-wide network with 385 villages in 131 countries on all the five continents.

Backed by some 90,000 volunteers collecting donations, an eight- hour television programme of the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation NRK fetched more than 16 million US dollars in a campaign last month.

The funds will be used to build SOS villages in Haiti, Russia, India, Zimbabwe and Columbia, according to NRK.

The principle behind the SOS Children’s Villages is simply that every child needs a mother, a house, and brothers and sisters. The children are most often orphans, or are simply suffering from gross neglect.

Gmeiner4s idea was to have the children grow up under as normal circumstances as possible; in a family.

According to the organisation, today more than 50.000 Norwegians contribute to the SOS Children’s Villages, and the number is growing.

This year’s campaign – known as telethon – provided the foundation with even more donors, and Svein Gronnern, General Secretary of the Norwegian branch of the SOS Children’s Villages said he was overwhelmed by the response.

The funds, he said, would be used on various projects, the most imminent is the construction of an SOS Children’s village in the Russian city of Murmansk on the Kola peninsula.

Among the volunteers who came knocking at the doors of Norwegians on Oct 22 were the Chinese Som Zhe and Bina, and Brazilian William. Som Zhe, Bina and William are themselves SOS children.

“SOS children’s villages gave me the home I had never had. To me that was life. We are grateful to be able to participate in this fundraising, better than most we know what it means,” said William from Brazil.

Among the many Norwegians who through their contribution are godparents to children in some remote part of the world is also Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg.

Stoltenberg and his family are godparents to a Chilean child in one of the country’s SOS Children’s villages.

Says Stoltenberg: “This kind of concrete involvement is an excellent way to show that solidarity is more than words. We have three children, the only difference is that one of the three lives in Chile.”

The godparents pay an amount of 17 dollars per month to keep a child in school and provide them with other necessities.

SOS Children’s villages put great emphasis on the contact between the godparents and their “adopted” child. Letters and pictures go back and forth, and many godparents actually visit their “children”.

World-wide SOS Children’s Villages have recruited 185.000 godparents, of these 54.000 live in Norway, while Germany remains the largest contributor to the organizations work. Many sign up as friends of SOS, while others choose the more personal relationship as godparents.

The fundraising telethon has raised millions of dollars for various organizations and causes over the years.

In 1990 Save the Children raised 15.5 million dollars and last years event went towards raising funds for Amnesty International, the final result amounting to 13 million dollars.

In addition to the contribution from the Norwegian people, the Government also donates a substantial sum. This year their contribution was close to three million dollars.

In addition to fundraising and regular donations by individuals to the various Norwegian NGOs, Norwegian authorities have always emphasized the country’s commitment to aid Third world countries.

According to figures from The Ministry of Foreign Affairs next year’s aid budget will be 1.3 billion dollars, a slight increase on this year’s budget.

Norway is aiming at a contribution of one percent of the its GDP in foreign aid. Presently the GDP-aid ratio amounts to 0.91 percent – ahead of the 0.7 percent United Nations target.

About 30 percent of the aid is channeled through a number of NGOs such as The Red Cross, Save the Children and Norwegian Peoples Aid. Also UN agencies get substantial funds. UNICEF alone received 31.6 million dollars of the total aid budget last year.

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