german
frenchTraining Centre for Benefit Deprived and Handicapped Children in Kissi
(BAOBAB Children Foundation e.V.)
In 2003 a training centre for deprived children and youths was started in Kissi, a small place not far from the historic Ghanaian town of Cape Coast on the Atlantic Ocean.
It all started in 2001 when Edith de Vos, from Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany, a Waldorf school teacher in early retirement, who was doing a two-year stint of voluntary teaching at Kissi's Oxford Preparatoty School, set up BAOBAB Children Foundation as an NGO. Since then, as the only German to do so, she has been living locally, finding her own funding.
Witnessing the great number of deprived children and youths of the region she decided to establish BAOBAB Children Foundation and the BAOBAB School for Trades and Traditional Arts (BASTRATAA) seeking to offer nonformal education and training to young children that are illiterate, living on the streets, AIDS orphans and engaged in child labour.
Construction of workshops and related buildings to house the boarding school has been going on in several stages since 2005, always fully funded by donations. In 2005 there was constructed a school building with simple workshops for wood carving, batik work, weaving, wickerwork, and carpentry. In 2005 there were added a school kitchen, a rainwater reservoir as well as a girls' dormitory. In the meantime sanitary facilities, a batik and sewing workshop, a boys' house, a guest and volunteers house and a workshop for rattan furniture have been built as well as another school building with group rooms and a library, a pottery, a workshop for glasbeads-production and a joinery with machinery. Concurrently the grounds and the building shall be designed to fit the needs of the disabled.
One of the main objectives of the institution is to combat illiteracy. As the children and youths have not been able to attend school or only insufficiently so, they have to be introduced to such cultural and artistic skills as normally taught at school. They learn to read, write, do arithmetic as well as practical skills in handicrafts and artisan's work. An artistic and practical training should provide the basis for future professional practice.. At the same time all pupils are introduced to organic farming on the school's farm.This farm also provides healthy food to be used in the school kitchen as well as contributing to the upkeep of the school by offering vegetables, mushrooms and fish for sale. In 2012 the cultivation of bees is supposed to be started. The Baobab house in Cape Coast (see website) will ensure the sustainability of the project.
In 2010 five buildings burned down due to uncontrolled bush fires (see start page of the website). Four buildings have already been rebuilt but there is still a round house with three rooms missing: one medicine room, one farmroom for the treatment and sale of different products and one room where the equipment of the drum and dance group (Baobab Culture Troupe) is stored.
Moneys needed at present
- for construction of a round house: 15,000 euros
- for a long term rental of an office in Cape Coast: 10,000 euros
You receive closer informations about this group:
www.baobab-children-foundation.de