The Foreign Aid Service

Raising funds to support vital works abroad

The Foreign Aid Service (FAS) raises support for the works of the Order around the world. With an annual dinner and emergency appeals throughout the year the money raised by FAS goes directly towards:

• disaster and emergency situations through Malteser International or the Associations.
• long-term sustainable support to the most needy: the persecuted, elderly and disabled people, refugees, the homeless and those with neglected diseases through the Global Fund for Forgotten People.

Staffed by volunteers, the FAS is low-cost and it benefits from the international reach and scale of the Order to be effective. We carefully select initiatives where the money raised can make a meaningful difference to the project and those who are helping.

Thanks to the work of the volunteers and the generosity of our sponsors, the FAS is able to donate all the money raised straight to the different projects.

Severe Earthquake in Syria and Turkey 

We wanted to update you all on what the Order’s response has been to the devastating earthquakes in Syria and Turkey so far. The epicentre of the earthquake was near to our longstanding project regions around Kilis and Gaziantep so the Order’s worldwide relief agency Malteser International (MI) was able to help straight away. 

MI is supporting six hospitals, a maternity and children hospital as well as eight primary health care units in the regions of Idlib and North Aleppo in northwestern Syria. It has sent an emergency relief team to the affected region and is providing 400,000 Euro emergency aid for the procurement of relief goods.

The aid projects in the Syrian border region are managed from Turkey. Oliver Hochedez, Head of Emergency Relief of Malteser International, is in constant exchange with the partners in northwestern Syria.  “Our local partners are in urgent need of support, especially in the refugee areas in the north of Syria, where hundreds of thousands of people are living in simple shelters and are now even more vulnerable after the earthquake. Temperatures in the region are currently freezing and it is raining extensively. In the hospitals of our partner organisations, the number of injured people is increasing by the hour. So we have to provide help quickly,”. 

Our emergency relief team is coordinating immediate relief efforts and will provide urgently needed relief supplies to the affected people. Two trucks with a total of 10 tons of relief supplies, such as beds, tents, blankets and mattresses for the affected people in Turkey are going out today from Hanover and Speyer in Germany. Additional transport is already in preparation. The distribution of these relief goods will be done by MI’s partner organisations in Turkey on site. 

If you would like to donate, we encourage you to support the work of MI which you can do through the following link.

DONATE NOW

If you decide to donate to BASMOM please reference this with ’Syria’ or ‘Turkey’ and we will redirect the funds to MI. 

Countries around the world are sending support to help the rescue efforts. As you can imagine the disaster recovery phase will be long and enormous and the area will need your money and prayers for a long time to come. 

These are some of the projects that have been funded in the past:

• Lithuania: Training paramedics at school
• Lebanon: medical supplies for Refugee families
• Malteser International Appeal

PATRON: Celestria Hales

CURRENT FAS COMMITTEE:

Cécile Coke (Chair),

Shireen Akrawi,

Antonino Cordopatri

Marco Gubitosi

Eugenie van Nispen tot Sevenaer

Christian von Sanden