Two school buildings and a toilet block were freshly painted from the outside and six classrooms from the inside. More than 300 metres of water pipes were laid in rock-hard baked soil. And a fence and a frame with shade netting for a 9 x 12 m fruit and vegetable garden was erected.
This is the proud result of ten days of hard work done by 18 pupils from the Heinrich Hertz School in Hamburg for the Ç‚Nabasib Primary School near BüllsPort in south-central Namibia.
The members of the 'Weltweit mit Her(t)z'-AG travelled to Namibia for a fortnight at the end of August. The trip was organised and led by two teachers and a long-time member who is now studying. The founder and former head Wolfgang Thiel also came along. Except for the two teachers, all participants covered most of their travel costs themselves with 1,200 Euros (currently about N$ 24,000). It was the AG's fifth working visit to Ç‚Nabasib after 2008, 2013, 2015 and 2018.
As always, the needs of the government school Ç‚Nabasib were identified in advance. In addition to the renovation, an improved water supply and the vegetable garden for the school kitchen, there was also a large donation in kind. The two teachers from Hamburg handed over eight discarded but fully functional laptops and three beamers. With these, the eight teachers of Ç‚Nabasib can now drastically reduce the high costs for copies. Although Namibia's government always devotes the largest share of its budget to the education sector, the state funds per school are only enough for the bare necessities.
Die Norddeutsche Stiftung für Umwelt und Entwicklung (NUE, North German Foundation for Environment and Development) provided 5,300 Euros (about N$ 106,000) for paint and materials. The 'Weltweit mit Her(t)z'-AG collected further funds amounting to 4,900 Euros (almost 98,000 N$) with catering and fundraising events organised almost monthly. The Naukluft Foundation of BüllsPort Lodge & Farm, from where the school can be visited on an excursion, took over the coordination on site and the procurement of materials.
The travel company Gondwana Collection Namibia also supported the project. Its subsidiary Go2 Traveller Transfers provided a bus with driver. The pure cost price of more than N$ 20,000 (about 1,000 Euros) for the bus rides of the group between the International Airport near Windhoek and Ç‚Nabasib (about 260 km each way) and for a thank-you excursion to Sossusvlei in the Namib Desert (additionally about 220 km in total) was covered by the Gondwana Care Trust.
Sven-Eric Stender