Sandberg Estates fund a school in Namibia

At Sandberg Estates we are avid supporters of charities worldwide. Founder, Michael Schwalbach visited our most recent project early this year, a school funded by Sandberg Estates and located in Kaokoveld, about 740 kilometres north of the Namibian capital Windhoek.

There is an increasing desire among the Ovahimba to send their children to school and the children themselves would also like to go to school. Likewise, the government attaches importance to integrating, promoting and educating the Ovahimba as an archaic living community into the social community.

They are now semi-nomads and one of the last remaining nomadic peoples in the world. Due to this, the schools are not only schools but also social stations where the children must live and be looked after during school time, as parts of the family or even their whole family is on the move. An additional aspect is the enormous distances that the pupils must travel to their homes (sometimes several 10 km).

Background to our project
The school in Ozonungu is a mobile unit and about 50 km away from Opuwo. Until now, 64 children were taught there in a tent by 2 teachers. This number of pupils will increase now that there are permanent classrooms.

Further measures are to be implemented at the school in the long term to provide the children with a safe, pleasant and good learning environment:
- Construction of classrooms
- Construction of a hostel with sanitary facilities
- Construction of a kitchen with dining hall
- Construction of teachers’ houses

The school has been dedicated to mother and grandmother of co-founders Michael and Cecilia, Anja Sandberg.