Bicycle Workshop in a Container

In November 2023, the Taking Hands Educational Centre, an integrative day care centre offering care and tutoring services to students, received a generous donation of bicycles from Germany. Some of these bicycles needed repairs, and the children who had already learned to ride bicycles expressed great interest in learning how to repair and maintain them. The project plans to use two containers as storage and workshop spaces to teach these skills to the children. A staff member of the centre will lead the workshop and provide instruction, allowing the children to earn pocket money in the future by repairing bicycles from the community.

Conambiki e.V. and the Taking Hands Educational Centre have known each other through previous collaborations and visits. In the past, Conambiki e.V. donated laptops from Germany to the centre, which were used for educating children with physical disabilities. Based on these positive experiences, the Taking Hands Educational Centre approached Conambiki e.V. for support with the bicycle workshop project. The donation of bicycles from Germany and the children's interest in repair work laid the foundation for this new initiative.

The Taking Hands Educational Centre is an integrative day care centre in Omaruru, Namibia. It educates and supports both disabled and non-disabled children together. In Namibia, opportunities for children with disabilities are often limited as disabilities are viewed as a stigma in society. The Taking Hands Educational Centre strives to address this issue by offering inclusive education and providing children with a foundation for independent living. The German association Taking Hands Namibia-Deutschland e.V., founded in 2020, supports the centre with the goal of bringing together disabled and non-disabled children and offering them equal opportunities.

The vision for the Bicycle Workshop in a Container project is to not only impart practical bicycle repair skills to students of the Taking Hands Educational Centre but also to open up economic opportunities for them. By repairing bicycles and earning pocket money, the children can develop independence and responsibility. Long-term, the project aims to sustain itself by allowing youth to apply their learned skills within the community and earn income. In doing so, the project contributes to the sustainable development of the region and strengthens the community.