Support for the farmschool Baumgartsbrunn

Since November 2020 we support the elementary school "Baumgartsbrunn" in Namibia. The 200 students come mainly from scattered farms and unofficial settlements in the capital Windhoek. The majority of them belong to the Damara ethnic group, one of the most disadvantaged ethnic groups in Namibia. During a visit in 2019, we first learned about the boarding school and learned that it is threatened with closure. The school itself is government-run, but things beyond the classroom, such as the boarding school, maintenance of the associated accommodation and other buildings, including food, are not funded by the government. PEN PAPER PEACE will support Baumgartsbrunn so that the children can continue to attend school and thus have a future that they can shape according to their wishes.

Education for a better future
School attendance in Namibia is compulsory. Nevertheless, 11% of all children cannot go to school today. Almost 30% of the pupils do not finish elementary school. This is mostly due to financial reasons: Many families cannot afford the necessary school materials, and in some cases the children have to work for the survival of the family. PEN PAPER PEACE would like to contribute to enabling all children to attend school. Because education is the key to a better future. Therefore we offer the children a free school attendance in Baumgartsbrunn. The school functions as a boarding school so that children who live far away from the nearest school can also learn. In addition, they are offered a safe environment on site, where they can play with their peers in their free time and do not have to work. Only local teachers teach at the school, currently six of them are female and three are male.

History of the Baumgartsbrunn Farm School
In 1972 the school was founded by Helmut Bleks, when he noticed that the children of his farm workers could not read, write and calculate. In the following years the school was enlarged more and more and financed by the Helmut Bleks Foundation, and later by the bürger:sinn:stiftung. In 2005, the school finally passed into state hands.

We are very aware of the problems of quasi-colonial power relations in the founding and management of the school until the recent past, and we are critical of them. The colonial entanglements of Germany and Namibia, until the end of the colonial period in 1918 "German South West Africa", bring with them a special responsibility for us as a German NGO. This makes it all the more important for us to enable local children to attend school and to live up to our responsibility by acting in a reflective manner and cooperating on an equal footing. For example, all pedagogical staff on site are Namibians.

Accompanying educational materials
In order to accompany the partnership in Germany pedagogically, we are developing accompanying decolonial educational materials for primary schools on our learning platform for Global Citizenship Education (in German).