Some facts for the introduction:

• more than 8 million people die every year because of being too poor to stay alive
• we can say that more than 20 thousand people die every day because of poverty– to be more precise it is more than 8 thousand children dying in malaria, 5 thousand mothers and fathers die in tuberculosis, 7500 young people die in AIDS and thousands of others in diarrhea and respiration diseases which kill mostly the bodies weakened by the lack of food
• poor people die in clinics in which there is lack of medicine, in villages where there are no nets over their beds to protect them from mosquitoes with malaria, in houses made of tin plates in slum areas of big cities where is no drinking water and therefore they suffer from poor hygiene
• extreme poverty has several dimensions, it’s not only the low income, it is lives threatened by diseases, no education, chronic hunger and malnutrition, absenting access to drinking water and hygiene, environment obliteration – deforestation, soil 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 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 aid. Besides this help there are non-governmental organization which offer development aid 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 its aid in the 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 the development aid is also called development cooperation and in order to be efficient it should be a true cooperation.