Drosos Foundation owes its existence to a private endowment. It is ideologically, religiously and politically independent.

Dignity and Responsibility

Every individual bears the responsibility for himself, for others, for the environment. Drosos Foundation is committed to enabling disadvantaged children, young people and young adults to take control of their lives and make a positive contribution within their community. The Foundation promotes skills and creates living conditions which enable these people to fulfil their responsibilities.

Drosos Foundation is convinced that life and technical skills are key elements in personal development. These skills help children, young people and young adults to be independent in the way they manage and take responsibility for their own lives.

Areas of Work

Drosos Foundation pursues two complementary strategies for promoting the independence and personal responsibility of the individual:

Promoting creative skills

 

With the conviction that the promotion of creative skills embedded within the respective cultural environment strengthens both personal and social skills, the Foundation creates and promotes long-term initiatives which enable children and young people to discover their creative capacities, systematically develop them and to utilise these as a life skill.

 

 

With the conviction that economic independence facilitates integration into society, dedicated young people receive vocational training along with support and assistance to help them gain life and technical skills, to integrate into the local labour market and achieve economic independence.

Drosos Foundation strives to create opportunities particularly for those children, young people and young adults who, during the course of working together in a project, display a commitment and willingness to improve and accept responsibility for their living conditions.

Working Method

• - Drosos Foundation plans, develops and supports projects that have a direct bearing on improving the living conditions of particular groups of people. Start-up funding is aimed at facilitating pioneering work that sustains positive developments within society. It does not provide either individual or emergency aid.
• - In its activity, Drosos Foundation seeks a long-term impact of its projects which continues to develop long after the projects have ended. The beneficiaries – as well as the organisations supporting them, where this is appropriate – are offered help to help themselves.
• - Drosos Foundation sets thematic and geographic priorities. In this context it favours those areas which receive no or inadequate public or private funding. It pursues a niche strategy and operates in Switzerland, Germany and the MENA region, with the focus of its involvement primarily abroad.
• - The individual and social benefit of the work shall clearly exceed the costs of the activities that are implemented in an accurate and efficient manner. Also, the effectiveness of the pioneering work should be locally recognised and appreciated. This facilitates the – whenever possible local – sustainable funding, replication and scaling of the pioneering work by means of self-financing, public resources or third parties– in particular after the end of Drosos Foundation’s involvement in the project.
• - A limited proportion of the Foundation’s resources may be used for projects that do not meet this strict sustainability requirement.
• - Drosos Foundation sees itself as an organisation characterised by a willingness to learn, social entrepreneurship and business-like philanthropy. It derives its effectiveness from the clearly focused technical and project management capabilities and expert knowledge of its employees.
• - The Foundation normally mandates a partner organisation with the implementation of projects, requiring them to meet high standards in terms of social entrepreneurship, fairness, transparency and willingness to learn.
• - Drosos Foundation informs the public of its activities.