Arbeit und Dritte Welt

On the initiative of the Labora youth workshop in Hildesheim, we helped to put together tools and small machines for the “Children Raising Voices” project in Kampala, Uganda. Katja Rohde from Hildesheim is a co-founder of this project and presented it during the “One World Week” in Hildesheim in 2009. Together with HeJo Theisgen from Labora, we put together the contents of a wooden crate, which was transported by air freight to Kampala in March of this year.

Kinder Raising Voices describes its work as follows: “Many people in Uganda have to live far below the subsistence level. Due to the high birth rate and low life expectancy, children in Uganda are usually left to fend for themselves from a young age.

The street children’s project “Kinder Raising Voices” (KRV) was founded by Katja Rohde, a qualified social pedagogue, Nathan Lule, Isaac Lule and Silver Bisaso and arose from the idea of offering socially disadvantaged homeless children, such as AIDS orphans in Uganda, a better future through education. A crucial point for the foundation of this project was the corruption that prevails in other social projects. It is important to us that the donations are used effectively for the project.

The idea of setting up our own project for disadvantaged children first came up in 2006. In January 2009, the idea was put into practice and KRV became increasingly involved with the issue of “life on the street”. We went to the slums, saw how the children live, made contact with them and were able to get an idea of their living situation.

When we were given facilities in Kawempe, a suburb of the capital Kampala, we initially started the project with five children who were able to attend school thanks to our support. We started with various smaller projects, such as vegetable growing, chicken farming, handicrafts and artistic drawing.
We then used the experience we gained to incorporate our ideas for implementing and designing the KRV project as realistically as possible.

Our aim is to offer the children in the project a perspective, to give them a home and to provide them with access to education.

Our objective is for the children to develop into competent individuals who are able to master the tasks and challenges of their lives themselves.

At the invitation of Ambassador Petros Tseggai, the chairman of the Eritrean Trade Union Federation, Tekeste Baire, came to Hildesheim.

Ambassador Tseggai’s plan that the trade union chairman should also get to know the basics and framework conditions of initial vocational training in the skilled trades using Hildesheim as an example was supported by Chamber of Skilled Crafts President Jürgen Herbst and Chamber Managing Director Jürgen Garms, while Embassy Secretary Johannes Yassu helped with the translation. Tekeste Baire was able to gain an overview of the workshops for wood, metal and electrical engineering.

The background to the ambassador’s second visit to Hildesheim is the plan to set up a vocational training center in Massawa, Eritrea. As Ambassador Tseggai announced, a large part of the building has already been completed. The Chamber of Skilled Crafts and Arbeit und Dritte Welt want to help set it up.

During the subsequent visit and tour of the Arbeit und Dritte Welt workshop, the guests were welcomed by many employees as well as Andreas Gehrke, Secretary of the DGB Region Niedersachsen-Mitte. Association chairman Fred Schulz and board member Ute Wittenberg confirmed their willingness to help set up the planned workshops and emphasized the importance of this visit for the association’s motto: Unemployed people provide development aid. The return visit has now helped to concretize the aid.

Bernd Lange, Member of the European Parliament, visited us at the suggestion of Markus Brinkmann, Member of the State Parliament.

Association chairman Fred Schulz used the example of Hildesheim to show that the concept of Arbeit und Dritte Welt could create around 50,000 additional jobs throughout Germany.

Schulz expressed his concern that the German government’s cuts in the area of labor market promotion offered no prospects for weaker and older unemployed people and called for a permanently funded second labor market.

Today, students from the Politics sub-course at the Elisabeth-von-Rantzau College for Educators in Hildesheim visited us under the guidance of their teacher Carolin Schnelle.

After a tour of our company premises and the factory hall and workshops, there was a lively discussion in the canteen. Sabine Jäger, Rebecca Grimm and Thomas Brien were confronted with many well-founded questions. As always, the time was unfortunately far too short.

Thomas Brien concluded by saying that Arbeit und Dritte Welt would be very interested in continuing this exchange. The students are always welcome.

After hearing last year that an old farm in Algermissen was to make way for a supermarket, we lurked week after week.

Finally, in January, we were told we could go ahead. No sooner said than done. We visited the building site, ordered a container, packed thermos flasks (with hot coffee), put on warm clothes and drove to Algermissen early in the morning.

The result was impressive!

On February 14, 2011, pupils from the Yellow School on Moritzberg, a representative of “Buntstift” as well as Peter Wein and the chairman of the association “Arbeit und Dritte Welt”, Fred Schulz, crowded around Rector Meyer in the entrance area of the Hildesheim dm supermarket: Award ceremony!

The school, Buntstift and ADW and their projects were selected from over 70 applicants to present their initiative on one day each. The customers of the dm store were then able to vote (see report from 01.01.2011).
The pupils of the Yellow School won 1st prize!

For us, the cash prize is the basis for being able to produce a whole lot of solar lamps from recycled industrial waste together with solar panels. Let’s see which shipment to Africa we will send them on this year. The colleagues in our workshop at the Technology Center are rightly proud!

We also received a certificate – which is now displayed on the information board in the workshop.

For several months now, our mechanical workshop at the Technology Center has been producing LED lamps from industrial waste. Batteries are charged using a solar module. These provide light for around 8 hours. The idea is to make these lamps available to our friends and partners in Africa, but it is also conceivable that they could be used here in Germany.

The lamps have been developed and manufactured with a great deal of creativity by our colleagues. The idea came from master electrician Helmut Eschmann from Barsinghausen, who became aware of us at the regional discovery day in 2009.

As part of a nationwide competition for sustainability organized by dm, we were among 70 applicants in Hildesheim, along with two other initiatives, and had an exhibition in the Hildesheim dm store for one day.

Together with the Eritrea Relief Organization (EHD) and the Eritrean Association for the Disabled in Stuttgart, we carried out our largest donation transport to Eritrea to date on December 20 and 21, 2010.

The weather and chaotic road conditions could not prevent the containers from being loaded with wheelchairs, walking sticks, rollators and 20 refurbished treadle sewing machines.

We loaded 2 40′ containers in Stadtfeld, and a third 40′ container was loaded with 40 rolls of irrigation hoses and accessories.

The Eritrean War Disabled and Disabled Persons Association (EWDVA) was also the recipient of this shipment. The collection of donations was supported by the DGB-Ortskartell Sehnde, the AWO and a large number of individual donors from Hildesheim and the surrounding area.

On December 17, 2010, Deo Baribwegure, director of KICORA, the Kigoma Community College by Radio, visited us. Kigoma is a port city on Lake Tanganyika in western Tanzania and has just over 100,000 inhabitants.

The city is an important transportation hub: both the terminus of the Tanganyika Railway and a sea route to Burundi, Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Incidentally, the passenger ship Liemba, once built at a shipyard in Lower Saxony, sails from there.

The rural population is poor, illiteracy is a major problem and there are few educational opportunities. KICORA, founded on the initiative of Baribwegure, a biologist, is trying to remedy the situation.

The aim is to reach people interested in education with correspondence courses via a radio station. There is currently a lack of a large transmission mast.