“Aid for Eastern Europe” is the name of a fund-raising campaign being run by Caritas Austria to alleviate the dramatic situation of poverty in some former Communist countries of Eastern Europe, including Bulgaria and Moldavia. The campaign, which will continue through February, was presented in Vienna on 9 February with a press conference with the participation of the president of Caritas Austria, Franz Küberl, the director of the Caritas agency in Vienna, Michael Landau, and the journalist Barbara Coudenhove-Kalergi. “In the heart of Europe there are countries in which a large part of the population are faced by the stark choice between hunger and cold in winter”, said Küberl, expressing the hope that the generosity shown by Austria in coming to the aid of the victims of the tsunami in South-East Asia would also be extended to peoples geographically closer to home: “Just a few hundred kilometres from Vienna there are people for whom one warm meal a day represents a luxury”, he said. Citing the alarming data of the FAO and UNICEF on poverty and malnutrition in Eastern Europe, from which children in particular are suffering, Küberl declared that “political action fails to combat poverty. Due to Communism, solidarity and a willingness to help the weakest members of society have been stifled”. The president of Caritas described the aid being provided by the humanitarian organization in Bulgaria, Moldavia, Albania, Romania and Belarus, articulated in some 250 projects, including the installation of school canteens and the distribution of meals to families in difficulty and the elderly. Küberl made an appeal for joint aid action by the richer European countries: “The campaign against poverty, throughout Europe, must finally become one of the priorities of the countries of the EU”, he said.
