“Small country with a big heart”

Di-Ve, 09 June 2010

Malta is “a small country with a big heart”, Foreign Minister Tonio Borg said in a speech detailing Malta’s assistance to developing countries.
Dr Borg was speaking at the opening of a training workshop on capacity building schemes. Within the context of development aid, capacity building is the assistance provided to entities in developing countries to help them develop necessary skills and competences.

Addressing the NGOs present at the workshop, the minister noted that until recently, with the exception of a handful of projects in Albania and Sri Lanka, few local NGOs ventured beyond Malta’s borders. However, he added, this was all changed with Malta’s accession to the EU.

The foreign ministry has set up a development directorate which manages a budget of €330,000 annually, money which is aimed at projects in the developing world.

Dr Borg said that while government has taken the role of policy planner, it embraced the involvement of civil society to implement development policy, noting that NGOs were the best at carrying it out.

“We have and will continue to partner with you in order to best represent our aspirations worldwide. You are the agents of change and we rely on you in order to translate our policy into concrete actions on the ground,” the minister told those present.

Malta’s area of focus was mainly centred on the Horn of Africa, Dr Borg said, with full recognition of the country’s limited size and resources.

“By concentrating on infrastructural projects in one area of the world we are giving our development policy a better chance of success. And by success we mean a registered improvement in the lives of those recipients of our aid,” the minister said.

He later said that the outpouring of support from Malta after any natural disaster across the world was testimony to Malta’s status as a small country with a big heart, though he noted that Malta could not simply limit itself to reacting to crises, but be consistently present overseas.

“The key to our success is most definitely sustainability. No longer are we a nation of tins and clothes so to speak. On the contrary whilst we will still appeal for necessities in times of crisis, our development policy is and should be centred on long-term, sustainable projects. We will give a man a fish but also ensure that we will give him a fishing rod in order to be able to catch the fish himself,” Dr Borg noted.

As an example, he noted that after a tsunami affected many countries bordering the Indian Ocean in 2004, SOS Malta opted to fund the purchase of fishing boats in a Sri Lankan village instead of simply purchasing food, thus ensuring the sustainability of the fishing community.

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