ICRI has been involved in Scandinavian and European child and family programs since its inception in 1981.  In the mid to late 1990’s ICRI had an active European headquarters in the Netherlands. During this time we received funds from the European Union for our youth programs in Europe and from several foundations for our work in Sudan and Eastern Europe. The office and staff were largely funded by our mentor organization in central Europe, the Dutch foundation for Childcare Stichting Kinderopvang Humanitas.

In the late 90’s Humanitas experienced some funding challenges that made it difficult to maintain its level of funding to the ICRI Europe office. We slowly phased out that office and operated the programs from our headquarters in the US. In the first decade of the new millennium, ICRI International experienced rapid growth in several offices around the world. This lead to increased revenues and the possibility of re-establishing a European office. After deliberation and discussions in 2003 and 2004, we obtained NGO status in Sweden for ICRI Europe in the fall of 2004. In January 2007 ICRI Europe relocated to Norway, where we obtained our status as a non-profit, humanitarian non-governmental organization (NGO) in July of that year. 

ICRI Europe’s mission is to develop and operate programs to meet the needs of children and families in Europe as well as to support fundraising and project development for ICRI’s worldwide projects.