The government’s Hungary Helps program has helped 500,000 people to remain in or returning to their homelands in the four years since it was founded.
Since 2017, Hungary Helps has launched over 170 projects in 50 countries, providing humanitarian aid, supporting reconstruction works and helping to preserve Christian communities in crisis regions. Tristan Azbej, the state secretary responsible for aiding persecuted Christians and for the Hungary Helps scheme, attended the inauguration ceremony of a training facility in a shanty town in Nairobi, Kenya. The facility was built with Hungarian funding and will contribute to the training of 500 young people “living in hopeless circumstances”, a statement read.
Meanwhile, following a visit to Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina earlier this week, State Secretary Miklós Soltész said the Hungarian government supports Christian communities abroad in their fight for survival. The Hungarian government has part-financed three projects in the Western Balkans through its Hungary Helps program, he said. Soltész noted that in Mostar, the location of two projects, Hungarian soldiers had started the reconstruction of the city’s iconic 16th-century bridge just 25 years ago. Most recently, the Hungarian government contributed HUF 24.5 million (EUR 67,000) to both the building of a gymnasium for a local boarding-school and the reconstruction of the Serbian Orthodox cathedral that had been totally demolished during the Bosnian war between 1992 and 1995, he said. In Montenegro, Hungary has provided a Roman Catholic Albanian community with HUF 24.5 million in support for the reconstruction of a library of a Franciscan monastery, Soltész said.
Photo credit: Facebook/Azbej Tristan