Longtime Board Member and Co-Founder
Menschen für Menschen Switzerland Appoints Rolf Knie as Honorary President
2015
- Foundation thanks Rolf Knie for decades of tireless work for Ethiopia
- Honorary president will continue to accompany the organization's path as an ambassador
- Trust expert and board member Boris Blaser new president of the board of trustees
Zurich, August 13, 2015 – The independent foundation Menschen für Menschen Switzerland has appointed its co-founder and long-time board member Rolf Knie as honorary president. With this, the foundation honors its tireless fighter for Ethiopia, who co-founded the Swiss foundation in 1989 with Karlheinz Böhm and helped build it in Switzerland as a board member and president.
Knie had recently stepped down as president of the board of trustees to make room for a generational change after the successful reorganization of the Swiss foundation. The new president of the board of trustees is Swiss entrepreneur Boris Blaser. Josefine Kamm, managing director of Menschen für Menschen Switzerland: "Rolf Knie has made an invaluable contribution to the success of Menschen für Menschen in Switzerland over the past decades with tireless dedication and great persuasion. We are infinitely grateful to him, and we are very happy to have him by our side in the future. At the same time, we are pleased to have found an engaged successor in Boris Blaser, who has been accompanying the foundation's path for several years."
Swiss entrepreneur and artist Rolf Knie had known Menschen für Menschen founder Karlheinz Böhm since childhood. A deep friendship bound the two. Therefore, in 1989, Knie, inspired by his friend's fight for Ethiopia, decided to establish Menschen für Menschen in Switzerland together with him and current vice-president Carl Meyer. The first office of the Swiss foundation was located in his house in St. Gallenkappel. Since then, Knie, alongside Karlheinz Böhm, has devoted himself wholeheartedly to ensuring that Menschen für Menschen Switzerland has become a respected and successful organization that stands by the Ethiopian population as an equal partner, and that the vision of simple and bureaucratic-free aid for Ethiopia is continued. He was initially involved as a board member, and since 2013, as president – always on a voluntary basis.
