Church of Sweden (CoS)

Work related to the ACT Development in the Svenska kyrkan or Church of Sweden is run by the international department and is divided into three areas.

Sustainable development programme
For people to live in dignity, poverty must be fought. Church of Sweden works to address economic, social and cultural rights, particularly the right to food, livelihood, social welfare, education and health.

Democracy, peace and security programme
Church of Sweden wants to contribute to just, peaceful, safe democratic societies in which human beings are respected and defended. The work is directed towards the process of building strong and relevant actors in civil society institutions as it is to empowering people to defend their dignity and claim their rights. Empowerment is an important step towards alleviating poverty. It is equally important that working for democracy, peace and justice implies working with advocacy and building awareness.

Quality and learning programme
Together with its partners the Church of Sweden aims to develop capacity to work with planning, monitoring, reporting and evaluation. Experiences and lessons learned need to be shared and incorporated in planning and implementation.

The principles of the Paris Declaration – ownership, harmonisation, alignment, managing for results and mutual accountability – need to be adapted to civil society and used to encourage development and combat poverty. Partners should set the agenda of their own work for development. Development needs to be better coordinated to advance the fight against poverty.