About us

AGIAMONDO e.V. – which operated as the Association for Development Cooperation (AGEH) until 2019 – is the German Catholic personnel service for international cooperation.

We are one of nine institutions in Germany recognised by the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) that deploys development workers in accordance with the German Development Aid Workers Act (EhfG).

We recruit qualified development workers for church and non-state development cooperation projects. In the Civil Peace Service, we also develop peacebuilding programmes together with partner organisations in countries affected by conflict. The Voluntary International Services (fid) office advises support organisations on establishing and expanding their international voluntary services and lobbies for them politically. 

Our understanding of personnel cooperation

Development and change call for new ideas. The most effective way to generate these is through interaction and exchange – and with a common desire to achieve social progress.

Working together gives rise to new ideas and innovative problem-solving approaches of a kind that would not exist without personnel cooperation: mutually supportive, cooperative development for all. Our work is founded on this basic conviction: personnel cooperation in all directions and all over the world, in a spirit of equality and mutual appreciation.

As the personnel agency of the German Catholics for international cooperation, we are committed above all to Christian values. The primary focus for us is on charity and preserving creation. Pope Francis’s Encyclical Letter points us in the direction that we need to go and sets great store by the power of community and the need for dialogue.

From a development service towards a service to the world

Development cooperation is not a one-way street running from North to South. Whether developing and emerging countries in the South or industrial countries in the North, all countries are developing countries. That means that we all need to develop. After all, it is only by developing solutions together that we can tackle the urgent problems of our world: poverty and hunger, injustice and violence, climate change and the destruction of our natural resources.

By interacting on an equal footing, by sharing responsibility and by trusting one another. In this way, development service becomes a global service to the world: from North to South, from South to South and from South to North. For a world without borders.

Where this South-North personnel secondment is already taking place, it yields benefits on three fronts: for the German organisation, for the development workers themselves, and for the home country organisations, who are able to integrate and make use of new know-how and contacts brought back by returning development workers. In this vein, AGIAMONDO also aims to establish a socio-ecological personnel service for Germany:

both returning development workers and volunteers are to extend their development service in Germany and to channel their experiences into the work of German organisations.

In this way, newfound knowledge and valuable information – e.g. for assisting empowerment processes – can be integrated into the necessary socio-ecological change in Germany and Europe. AGIAMONDO also plans to get more involved in South-South personnel recruitment so that partner organisations will also be able to network more effectively with one another and to share their experience and know-how.