Foundation Helps the San Rise From Poverty

from All Africa

The Namibian (Windhoek)

NEWS
16 November 2007
Posted to the web 16 November 2007

By Tanja Bause

WHEN Will Doll sold his company in the Netherlands, he wanted to help the less fortunate somewhere in the world where it was needed most.

In 2005 a friend of his visited Namibia and his e-mails and photos made Doll interested in the country and its people.

Later that year Doll made his first trip to Namibia, during which he visited Mangetti Dune where he came into contact with the local San communities.

Upon returning to the Netherlands he felt that he had to do something to try and help alleviate the abject poverty in which the San lived.

In 2006 he founded the Sanrise Foundation and with the help of Reverend Herman Oosthuizen of the Dutch Reformed Church Luhebu-North at Mangetti Dune, he started several development projects.

One of these is a sheep-farming project which gave breeding stock to the San people to help them start their own flocks.

After five years, they return the same number of sheep that they started out with, which can then be given to other fledgling farmers.

Sheep provide the San people with milk, meat and a steady income, and create jobs for the communities.

The San receive training in sheep farming to ensure the ongoing success of the project.

Another project that Sanrise and Reverend Oosthuizen are looking into is to teach the San to grow mahangu and other crops to achieve food self-sufficiency.

The church has received 50 hectares of land from the Government and the aim is to create five mahangu fields.

The land still has to be cleared and ploughed with the help of Sanrise.

The organisation also plans to build five classrooms on five different farms for pre-primary education.

At the beginning of this year Doll met Allan Corrigan, project coordinator for the Hand-in-Hand for Children organisation from Germany, and together they built a soup kitchen, day-care centre, shop, two guest rooms and established a vegetable garden.

The centre was opened recently and the soup kitchen will serve about 50 children and elderly people one meal a day.

It is hoped that the soup kitchen will become self-sustainable through the vegetable garden and the income generated by the two guest rooms.

"We would like to help the San communities by firstly providing for their basic needs and then we want to teach them to become self-sufficient so that they can better their circumstances and their lives," says Doll.