KING BAUDOUIN FOUNDATION

Focusing on Interethnic Relations, Life Heritage and Children and Youth with Special needs

The Belgic King Baudouin Foundation is an independent body working in public interest. Primarily, the Foundation was formed to work on improving Belgium population’s life conditions, but later it started working out of the home country’s borders. The Foundation has actively been working in the Southeastern Europe region since 2000, especially in the following spheres: ethnic relations, life heritage and children and youth with special needs.

Foundation’s headquarters are in Brussels and it also has an office in Atlanta, USA. Foundation’s annual budget is about 25 million euro.

The Foundation was formed in 1976, in event of the death of the Belgic king Baudouin.

The Foundation has three main objectives: to promote prosperity and welfare, to contribute to the mutual life’s dynamics in the society and to stimulate personal growth and development. In order to achieve these objectives, the Foundation has developed programs, campaigns and initiatives in the spheres of poverty and social excludability, labor and employment, sustainable development in the socio-economic sectors, justice and local self-government, media, culture and sport.

In Macedonia the Foundation cooperates and realizes programs through the Open Society Institute of Macedonia Foundation. At the moment, the program Life heritage is in process, whose objective is local communities’ development through using and putting into function local resources development – human and also cultural and natural heritage.

M.Ivanova