For the first time drinking water from its own well, plus a daily warm meal for all 300 pupils: the projects relating to the “Weilheim School” in Togo got off to a good start, despite the pandemic.
The initiators think it's time to say thank you to all supporters in Weilheim - and they still have some ideas.
Weilheim
- How much quality of life it means to finally be able to draw drinking water from a well on site is hard to imagine for Central Europeans who are used to running water from numerous taps in and around the house. But for the residents of the remote Togolese village of Kagnigbara it is a quantum leap, the drinking water fountain that Weilheim residents financed through the “Togohilfe” association - as a follow-up project to the “Weilheimer DERPART school” that opened in early 2020. This is also thanks to the many donors from Weilheim, who were able to inspire entrepreneur and ex-city councilor Uta Orawetz over the past three and a half years for her aid project.
The thanks from Togo are correspondingly great. It is expressed in a letter Orawetz received from Asabo Haratoukou a few weeks ago. The man in his mid-thirties, who comes from Kagnigbara and is now a senior government official, writes from the capital Lomé in “deep gratitude” for everything that is possible in Kagnigbara: for the school building with three classrooms, an office and simple toilets, for “the equipment with all the necessary materials ”, The“ recently completed drilling for the benefit of the students and their parents ”and the school canteen that is currently being built. "May Almighty God and the spirits of all our ancestors watch over you always and strengthen this partnership that exists between us, and may they give you the necessary health and good luck," Haratoukou concludes.Words of thanks and wishes that “apply to all donors”, as Orawetz recently emphasized at a press conference with her colleague Anja Böhm.
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School meals at the “Weilheimer Schule” in Kagnigbara: With 50 euros a school child can be cared for for a whole year.
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Like the "Togohilfe" based in Maisach, which implements and controls the projects, the women from Weilheim attach great importance to sustainability. The school meal that has started - “almost the only food” for many of the 300 children in Kagnigbara - is initially secured until summer, then ongoing support is needed again. A school child can be cared for for a whole year with 50 euros; an aid that 15 people from Weilheim are already providing permanently. Information on this funding of the KISS program (abbreviation for “children's school feeding”) is available in Orawetz 'Simader travel agency on Marienplatz. But the initiators are also grateful for individual donations. The coffee from Togo, which is available in the travel agency and of which one euro per pack goes to the "Togo Aid", is also a little help.
"Togohilfe" also arranges sponsored children - which are "really poor children" for whom there is an "urgent need for action", according to Orawetz. Health insurance for the children is now included in the amount of 35 euros per month: “A very good and important thing,” says Böhm, who was deeply impressed and talks about her sponsored child in Kagnigbara.
One of the initiators' wishes for the future is that the money from Weilheim can also be used to plant trees that are urgently needed in the Togolese village: to provide shade and fruit.
Orawetz also hopes that a partnership between a local school and the “Weilheimer Schule” in Kagnigbara will soon emerge.
It is less about donations, she emphasizes, but more about "cultural exchange".
For three years she herself has experienced that such development projects enrich both sides - full of gratitude.
donate
For the Weilheim projects in Kagnigbara, you can contact “Togohilfe eV” directly - Bank details: IBAN DE 34 7005 3070 0031 0399 10 (Sparkasse Fürstenfeldbruck).
Keywords such as “school meals” or “Weilheim” are important.
Info: www.aktionpit.de.