German Development Agency Celebrates Forty Years
June 24, 2003
Founded on June 24, 1963, the Deutsche Entwicklungsdienst (DED) was modeled on the American Peace Corps, itself born out of U.S. President John F. Kennedy's idea to create a voluntary service for young people to help abroad.
On Tuesday, the DED observed its 40th anniversary in the presence of German President Johannes Rau, the Minister for Development Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul and several foreign dignitaries in Bonn. It was a happy occasion for an organization that over the years has sent more than 13,000 development aid workers to more than fifty countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America
“The DED has played a very important role in making globalization more just,” said Wieczorek-Zeul in a speech to around 500 guests.
Though helping to improve the economic and social welfare of the developing world is certainly reason enough to celebrate, the DED can also be pleased Wieczorek-Zeul and German Finance Minister Hans Eichel on Monday agreed not to skimp on development aid, despite budget cuts at most of the other federal ministries.
With this year's development budget of nearly €85 million ($98 million), the DED currently has the means to keep more than 1,000 aid workers in 45 countries worldwide. Wieczorek-Zeul said budget cuts at the Development Ministry’s expense could make it difficult for Germany to uphold its international commitments. Germany last year pledged with other nations at the UN summit in Johannesburg last year to try and halve world poverty by the year 2015.
Promoting peace
The DED has come a long way from when Kennedy attended the official ceremony founding the organization 40 years ago. Back then the DED sent around 100 specialists, including mechanics, farmers, engineers, nurses and doctors to Libya, Tanzania and Chile.
But the face of the agency has evolved over the years. According to DED director Jürgen Wilhelm, it is no longer simply a case of sending skilled laborers overseas.
"We have an increasing number of academic aid workers, either from commercial, administrative or social science backgrounds. We also have lawyers working for our civil peace agency, who help to find missing persons in Latin America, or who have administrative experience," Wilhelm told Deutsche Welle.
These days some 75 percent of all DED volunteers are university graduates, not only from Germany but from countries across the European Union, and the average age has risen from 25 in 1973 around 40 these days.
At the start of 2003, the DED also dedicated its jubilee year to an initiative dubbed 'Development for Peace'. Development Minister Wieczorek-Zeul said the undertaking highlighted how the DED’s mission had extended beyond just battling poverty.
"Of course the fight against poverty is fundamental, as is allowing people to develop themselves. But we have also, through the DED created the civil peace agency, which also requires its workers to actively stimulate peace, perhaps by means of mediation in a local conflict, or by the non-violent solution to a conflict," she said.
Despite all the changes over the past four decades, the ethos behind the DED has remained the same. At the core of the organization’s philosophy is still the aim to help people to help themselves.