Gobabis Namibia

The first steps for children project in Okakarara is up and running and we now have taken the next step and have started a second project – in the town of Gobabis. It is located 175 kilometers east of Windhoek airport and 100 kilometers from the Botswana border. It’s a town of 30,000 inhabitants, 15,000 of whom live in great poverty in tin shacks in the slums outside the town. The unemployment rate is 85% and there is neither running water nor electricity. HIV/AIDS and Tuberculosis are extremely widespread. Many children either do not go to school at all or if so, only for a limited time.

In order to run a soup kitchen and a preschool with about 300 children, we are co-operating with an already existing project - Light for the Children.

The project leader of Light for the Children is a member of the board of trustees of steps for children in Namibia, while Michael Hoppe is a member of the trust Light for the Children. The project lies on the edge of the slum area and is a part thereof.

So far the project is being financed by donations that are partly coming very irregularly or not at all.  Light for the Children is receiving only 200N$ (about 20 €) per child per year from CAFO (Church Alliance for Orphans), which needs to be enough for food and everything else.

This is why our primary aim at the moment is to build up income generating projects (steps) that will help finance the social steps on a long-term basis, and make the project more independent of foreign help.

At the beginning of September 2011 a team of the German television transmitter ZDF has filmed two of our Granny Aupairs under the title “development aid helpers” in the steps project in Gobabis. You can find the film in our video gallery – pictures of our project in Gobabis you can find in the picture gallery.