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Historians Lukas Meier and Marcel Dreier invited 30 SolidarMed alumni to an exchange.
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In recent decades, SolidarMed has constantly adapted to changing situations to continue to improve healthcare for rural populations in southern and eastern Africa as effectively as possible. As the organisation approaches its centenary, it is taking a closer look at its past.
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SolidarMed is set to reach an important milestone in 2026: its 100th anniversary. To mark this important event, the organisation
has decided to take a look at its own history. To do so, it invited a group of historians from the global North and South to shine a light on SolidarMed’s history from as many different perspectives as possible.
4 historians from North and South
The core team comprises Dr Lukas Meier and Dr Marcel Dreier from Switzerland, Dr Glen Ncube from Zimbabwe, and Dr Andrea Azizi Kifyasi from Tanzania. All four historians have previously focused on rural healthcare provision in their research.
30 witnesses look back
The project has an ambitious mission: to record the history of SolidarMed over the past 30 years based on oral sources by contemporary witnesses and through intensive archive searches for the years beforehand. The first key step in this significant undertaking was carried out in Switzerland in April, when 30 former SolidarMed employees, each of whom represents a specific era, a topic or country, were invited to the office in Lucerne to share their experiences.
Are you interested in the witnesses’ stories? Check out some of the former SolidarMed employees’ stories!
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This gave rise to many interesting, remarkable and also depressing stories. The Swiss historians will now follow up these Swiss perspectives with the participants and other former SolidarMed staff members, and the African historians will do the same in Lesotho, Zimbabwe and Tanzania.