September 2019 – March 2020
My name is Jakob Fröhle. I live nearby the town of Ulm in Germany and I am 18 years old. I was blessed to spend my volunteer service with Elena, my collegue fom Weltwärts at the Baobab Children Foundation. Normally the Weltwärts volunteer service takes a whole year. Sadly we had to leave earlier. The German government called back all their volunteers in the middle of March because the situation is unclear how the Corona pandemic will develop in the next weeks. It hurts to say goodbye so early, and the more I am happy about the six and half months I could spend in the project.
My working sections were the ecological farm and the bicycle repair workshop. I worked with the farmers in the morning. We made beds, nursed seeds, removed weeds and watered the vegetables. The work with the farmers was interesting and lot of fun. I also had my own beds. I made them on my own and took care of them so we could harvest some vegetables.
In the afternoon I supported Barnabas in the bicycle repair workshop. The Baobab students learn how to take care of and how to repair a bicycle. Baobab regulary gets containers of used bicycles from Germany. We, as the Bicycle Workshop, fix them and make them ready for selling. Some of the bikes Baobab donates to schools in the villages around Kissi.The schools choose the students who are most in need of one. The workshop meant a lot of fun for me.
At Baobab you can not get bored. In the afternoons after closing of the workshops and at the weekends my volunteer collegues and myself organized freetime activities for the students. We organized sports tournaments, card and group games and my collegue also ran a theatre workshop. Other activities were the writing of student profiles and sponsor letters with the students
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The project of Baobab Children Foundation and the people in the project are dear to my heart. As soon as the situation allows it I want to go back to Ghana and finish my volunteer service properly, because I am not finished with Baobab yet.
