German help for Havana Soup Kitchen

THE HAVANA Soup Kitchen will benefit with N$80 000 out of the German Embassy’s 2010 micro-project fund that resorts under the Basic Education and Training for Out of School Youth and Adults in Namibia (BETOSYAN) project, The Havana Soup Kitchen opened its doors in June last year with the main aim to assist Namibian orphans and vulnerable children.

With a little assistance from Pallium e.V. in Giessen, Germany, the project manager, Frieda Kemuiko, built a small house in Havana from where she could provide some 40 children from the settlement with a daily meal. Some time later the treasurer and co-ordinator of the Havana Soup Kitchen, Gaby Voigts of Farm Voigtland, arranged contact with the German Embassy and supervised the much needed renovations for which the German Embassy agreed to allocate N$80 000.

These included a new roof structure, a storage room and a shaded playground or veranda which was levelled out to make it more child-friendly. Besides the daily meals, the children also receive pre-primary education to prepare them for easy access to Grade 1 and it is planned to enhance the chances of better living conditions for parents by teaching them income-generating activities like soap production, bread baking and sewing.

Dr Romeo Bertolini, Counsellor for Development Co-operation at the German Embassy, also handed over a consignment of toys and clothes as well as greetings and messages from 21 children of the Kinderladen Dottendorf in Bonn, Germany.

Through his family’s initiative, the children of the Kinderladen were inspired by the idea of a partnership between the two preprimary facilities and each donated a few toys and some clothes for shipment to the Havana Soup Kitchen, the embassy explained this week.

click to enlarge HELPING HANDS: (from left) Simon Geiseb, Gaby Voigts, Dr Romeo Bertolini and Frieda Kemuiko-Geises, the project manager of the Havana Soup Kitchen, celebrate their improved situation with the orphans and vulnerable children taught and fed at the project