Since 1957, Entraide d’Eglises has offered spiritual and material help to Christians in Central and Eastern Europe, persecuted and isolated during 50 years of Soviet domination. The aim of the organization is to support all those in the various countries who have been working to transform a very painful situation into a more Gospel-like Church, more open, more in harmony with the post-conciliar Catholic Church around the world.

When the Berlin Wall fell, the work of Entraide d’Eglises continued in the line of solidarity with Christians of these countries and in ecumenical partnership with their Churches. This work remains very important today in countries where Churches try, often without adequate means, to participate in the renewal of civil society.

In practice, Entraide d’Eglises sends theological, philosophical and social science books and journals to libraries impoverished during the Communist period, and does its best to support new Christian publishing enterprises. Entraide d’Eglises also offers scholarships to young people, laymen, nuns or priests, who wish to study either in Belgium or in their own countries, in order to reconstruct physical, intellectual and moral dimensions of cultural life, as well as to make new ideas more widely known. Entraide d’Eglises also hopes to be able to support new groups, because free associations are indispensable to rebuild a true democracy.

Entraide d’Eglises works in a spirit of reciprocity and mutual gift-giving; it has given special emphasis to persons with the potential of acting as “multipliers”. Permanent members and volunteers form an ever-growing network of solidarity and partnership growing every day.