In 2016, we took over the maintenance sponsorship for the area of the new playground and soccer field in Stadtfeld, which was being planned at the time. This newly designed playground and soccer field was officially opened on 04.12.2020. We were presented with a certificate of sponsorship by Mayor Dr. Ingo Meyer.
Report on the construction work in the Hildesheim district newspaper “Ost-Innenstädter” http://www.hildesheimer-stadtteilzeitungen.de/Ost-Innenstaedter_Juni_2020.pdf
In May 2019, we received a “L`invincibile F4” planer from the Italian manufacturer SCM, built in 1960, as a donation.
After the machine had been refurbished in our workshops and given a new coat of paint, it was shipped to Banjul/The Gambia.
There it is now doing a good job in the DBO/NGO A119 carpentry workshop.
On 8 April 2019, we sent a 40′ container for Dr. Rumpf from Burgdorf and the the documentation center on war events and peace work Sievershausen e.V. – loaded with relief supplies for the Panyadoli health project in the Kiryandongo refugee settlement in Uganda.
This settlement is managed by the UNHCR and now provides protection, land and support to more than 100,000 people. It is home to refugees from Kenya, the DR Congo, Rwanda, Burundi and, above all, the Republic of South Sudan.
The container contained 29 adult and children’s hospital beds, 2 X-ray machines, 1 sterilizer, 1 dental chair, gynaecological and urological specialist equipment, infusion stands as well as 25 wheelchairs and walkers and 52 walking aids.
In cooperation with our friends from the “Adi Belsey Primary School” association in Heilbronn, we have set up two new training workshops for wood and metal. The equipment we collected and refurbished for this had already been delivered to Massawa packed in containers.
The Eritrean Confederation of Trade Unions (NCEW), which had spearheaded this training initiative, had a separate new workshop building erected next to the central building for these workshops.
The school, which already offers courses in electrical engineering and office organization, is attended by well over 100 students every day. This is a very significant step towards a sustainable and exemplary improvement in the training situation for young people in Eritrea.
Doris and Peter Leiding from Grohnde visited us on 24.07.2017. They had heard about us through Jürgen Marquardt from Vechta from the Lernen-Helfen-Leben association and drove up with a large quantity of tool donations that they had stowed in the trunk of their car. These came from a house in Hamelin – a craftsman had run a workshop there. After his death, nobody wanted the tools. Instead of being scrapped, however, they ended up with us and are now being refurbished.
A large number of donations to support the social projects of DBO – NGO A119 – in The Gambia were loaded into a 40′ high cube container on July 10, 2017:
120 bicycles, 1 domestic waterworks, a large amount of hospital linen, 84 school desks and 94 school chairs, 5 school blackboards, 5 toolboxes, 1 box with vast amounts of different types of screws for the carpentry workshop in Sukuta, 2 welding machines, sportswear, 24 240L waste containers and 1 box of baby bottles and pacifiers, among other things.
The container was loaded onto the container ship MSC Sindy in Hamburg on 13.07.2017 and is expected to arrive in the port of Banjul on 03.08.2017.
For several years, the city of Hanover has been offering the “Tools for Africa” project for the long-term unemployed. We have been cooperating since the beginning and carry out donation transports together.
On July 4, 2017, employees delivered 60 bicycles for a donation shipment to The Gambia – the recipient is the DBO NGO A119 in Sukuta/Banjul.
Loading into a sea container is scheduled to take place in July.
On 28.06.2017, Mrs. Bartsch from Hamburg visited us – in her car she brought a large number of donations, including sportswear for children.
Ms. Bartsch had taken part in the Dresden – Banjul rally in the past and was therefore familiar with the needs in The Gambia from her own experience.
Germany is a country with a strong tradition of craftsmanship. Well over 100 trades have shaped life both in the countryside and in the city. The many craft businesses “next door” bear eloquent witness to this. Not least the enormous willingness of craft businesses to provide training and the idea of do it yourself has meant that the use and possession of tools is commonplace in almost every household in our country: tools can be found in kitchen cupboards, basements and barns in vast quantities.
But what to do with them when they are no longer needed? Even in craft businesses, this question arises when there is no successor. We have been collecting these tools via a network of supporters for 22 years and have not yet noticed that the quantities donated to us are decreasing. On the contrary.
These tools – some of which are rusty – are cleaned and refurbished in our workshops and can then be used again. This is much more effective than throwing them into the scrap heap and melting them down. It is more effective because these tools are still needed and can be used to generate income – e.g. in Africa.
On May 23, Holger Wötzel from Aue in Saxony and Michael Samel from Nordhausen in Thuringia visited us. Both had a huge amount of high-quality materials in their delivery vehicles, including doctors’ gowns, work clothes, sheets and towels.
We have had a lot to do with Holger Wötzel in the past. Two years ago, Holger organized an extensive donation of illustrative materials for motor vehicle mechanic training from a military barracks in Fürstenfeldbruck, which today serve as a practical illustrative aid for the apprentices in the DBO motor vehicle workshop in Sukuta.
Like Holger Wötzel, Michael Samel has already been to The Gambia several times with the Dresden-Banjul rally with the “Nordhäuser Wüstenfüchsen”.
We were delighted to get to know them both and arranged a return visit to Nordhausen in the near future.
