COSV is voluntary organization, non-profitmaking, involved in international solidarity since 1968. During these years, COSV and its volunteers implemented projects in Africa, Latin America, Asia and Europe.

COSV is made by hundreds of people that differently participate to all its activities: members, volunteers and field managers, consultants, partners, working teams, friends who support the activities in Italy and people who endorse specific projects.

COSV doesn’t adhere to any political party or specific group; it doesn’t come under the control of any Ministry.

COSV represents the civil society that

• Works for peacekeeping, for the safeguard of fundamental human rights (life, dignity, justice, etc), for environmental protection;
• Promotes the culture of solidarity; the denial of any form of racism; the active participation of free men and women and human, material and cultural development;
• Denounces global hunger, absence of democracy, plundering of raw materials, brutal mugging that everyday involves men and women in several countries around the World.

 

OUR MISSION

We cope with underdevelopment problems and promote a “culture of cooperation”, understood as solidarity among people and fight against all the mechanisms – even only informative ones - that generate disparity.

 

OUR PROJECTS

COSV methodology of intervention focuses on the partnership with local actors. COSV promotes a developing model grounded on the direct collaboration with local interlocutors, either public or private, involved in all projects since the first planning phase. Since more than 40 years, COSV has worked with hundreds of local partners, carrying out a field-planned cooperation as a result of the continuous exchange with communities’ needs.

COSV works in several different sectors, but identify itself in a unique intervention procedure and in shared purposes:

• Encourage local people participation, avoiding mechanisms of economic and technical dependency;
• Improve life conditions for the weakest groups such as women, elderly and children;
• Create conditions to permit local sustainability of the intervention, once the external funding is closed;
• Enhance local knowledge and culture, harmonizing economic and social development.

 

Fields of Intervention

COSV operates in several fields, such as:

Health: primary health care, precautionary medicine, mother-child health;

Human rights: capacity building, support to civil society and to South-South networks;

Agriculture and zootechny: reforestation, agriculture, traditional cultures preservation and development;

Environment: environment protection;

Professional training: adults’ professional training for intermediate technical sectors;

Education: special attention to primary schools;

Rehabilitation and habitat: rehabilitation of public structures, hospitals, schools, health care centers;

Productive projects: support to micro-entrepreneurial activities, handicraft and traditional saving activities;

Humanitarian aids: intervention immediately after crisis and emergency situations, both environmental and social, in the perspective of local communities’ support and future risks prevention.