A national collection to help young mothers and future mothers in difficulty will be held in all the dioceses of Switzerland in the second weekend of January 2006. The fund-raising campaign is being promoted by two Catholic humanitarian organizations that operate in German- and French-speaking Switzerland. One is called “SOFO”, solidarity funds for mother and child, and the other is the foundation “SOS future mothers”. The latter was founded in Fribourg in 1974 with the aim of holding out a helping hand, in real terms and for as long as is necessary, to future mothers from all social backgrounds, for whom pregnancy is the cause of often intolerable problems that they are unable to bear alone. The organization can count on the work of 500 volunteers. Each day the foundation’s call centre takes from 80 to 100 calls appealing for help. They come from “abandoned mothers, driven from home by their husbands, and from families in very precarious financial situations”. The aid for a total of 750/900,000 Swiss francs disbursed each year “has permitted us says a statement of the Swiss Bishops’ Conference to save a large number of children”. SOFO acts with the same purpose and much the same means. “The aid says the same statement is given in a rapid and non-bureaucratic way and enables the lot of the young mothers concerned to be considerably alleviated. To know that they have not been abandoned to their fate gives them strength and courage”.
