Basic facts:

• more than 8 million people die every year as a result of poverty and deprivation
• more than 20,000 people die every day because of poverty, this means: more than 8,000 children dying from malaria, 5,000 mothers and fathers from tuberculosis, 7,500 young people from  AIDS and thousands from diarrhea and respiration diseases killing mainly as a result of the body's deprivation of food
• poor people die in hospitals with insufficient supplies of medicine, in villages with no mosquito nets to protect them from malaria, in houses made of tin plates in slum areas in big cities with no drinking water, suffering from poor hygiene
• extreme poverty has several dimensions, poverty does not only mean low income- it is a life threatened by diseases, lack of education, chronic hunger and malnutrition, limited access to drinking water and hygiene, environmental obstacles- deforestation, erosion

(Jeffrey Sachs: The end of poverty, 2005)

Removing poverty and hunger in the world, prevention of illnesses and treatment of diseases as well as creating opportunity to improve life in development countries is not just a matter of hopeless optimists and idealists.

In this increasingly connected world the battle against poverty is not only a moral commitment, it helps to build stability and peace in the world. Because of this the developed states (including Slovakia) agreed that they will contribute to development aid with part of their wealth. Money from national governments’ budgets is called the official development assistance. Besides the public sector, there are non-governmental organization which offer development assistance and carry out projects in developing countries from finances gained in fundraising activities and received from foundations or the private sector.

Effective assistance should guarantee sustainable development – it should not create dependence on aid in developing countries but create opportunity for the countries to establish their own development. It should be based on the real needs of developing states and local communities and accomplished in cooperation with them. Therefore, development aid is also called development cooperation and in order to be efficient it should be a true cooperation.