Gerald Wagner

Caritas Austria

The main goal of Caritas Austria is to see hardship and act on it. This means to respect human life to its whole extent and to protect and help people in need, regardless of their origin, religion, gender, sexual orientation and abilities. It includes helping and empowering people in need to help them help themselves, as well as representing people who do not have a voice of their own (legal representation, lobbying). At the heart of Caritas´ work is a wide-range of 1,600 social assistance programs that target the poor and vulnerable in Austria. Among other things the services provided include legal and psychosocial counselling for people in need, the collection and distribution of food and other in kind donations, homeless and emergency shelters as well as shelters for mothers and their children, street work and counselling for people struggling with addictions, mobile and in-patient care for the elderly, support for caregivers, housing and job trainings for people with disabilities, legal counselling and representation as well as integration and educational activities, trauma relief and psychological care for refugees. Caritas Austria is often collaborating with members of Caritas Europa and Caritas Internationalis on overseas emergency and developmental programs, playing a key role in the area of foreign aid overseas. In the year 2015 Caritas Austria was engaged in over 620 aid projects. The efforts in the area of disaster relief currently concentrate on nine global focus points including the West Balkan route, the Middle East, Greece, Nepal and Africa's youngest country South-Sudan. Find out more about Caritas Austria's work in our latest annual report 2017: https://www.caritas.at/fileadmin/storage/global/document/Jahresbericht/caritas-jahresbericht-2017-english.pdf