We save and sustain lives in times of crisis

Our headquarters are in Switzerland - where we were orginally founded in 1989 - with Shared Service Centres in Kenya and Lebanon and national offices in France, Germany, South Korea, the Netherlands, United Kingdom and the United States. Medair is currently responding to humanitarian needs in 13 countries worldwide and has responded in 45 countries since 1989.

We rely on the time, money and prayer of our generous network of supporters. If you’d like to volunteer, make a donation, partner with us or learn how you can pray for our work, visit our Get Involved page for more information.

Medair focuses on people’s most urgent needs in times of crisis, which most often includes water and sanitation, nutrition, health, and shelter. We also use cash assistance where appropriate to help people provide for themselves, allowing them to prioritise their biggest needs while investing in the local economy. The people we serve are often traumatised, so we offer mental health and psychosocial support.

Our mandate is to respond to urgent humanitarian needs resulting from disaster, disease, and conflict. However, for communities to be more resilient, they need to become better prepared and resourced to withstand future threats. That’s why we also work on disaster risk reduction, disaster preparedness, and climate change adaptation with communities. We also train health staff and communities, and hire staff locally to strengthen their capacity to respond to emergencies.

For example, in places prone to climate disasters like Madagascar, we developed an early warning system to help communities prepare for incoming cyclones and local staff and communities to maintain water systems and ensure the availability of clean water in the long term.

We are transparent about our finances and committed to using them wisely – 90.5% of our funding goes directly to delivering humanitarian assistance and 9.5% to supporting management and fundraising efforts. We are certified to the Core Humanitarian Standard on Quality and Accountability (CHS), which underlines our programme excellence and commitment to giving communities the lead role in finding local solutions. And we are deeply committed to upholding and being accountable for our codes of ethics and protection policies.