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Dear sponsors and friends,
The first snow of this winter has now also fallen here in the far north of our wonderful country. Between Hamburg and Lübeck, where I (Matthias) live with my family.
My first year as CEO is behind me. An exciting year. In many ways.
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The entire Board and all members of the association, but especially the entire Nice View family in Msambweni, thank you from the bottom of our hearts for your support. It's great to have people like you at Nice View's side.
As far as my work as a board member of Projekt Schwarz-Weiß e.V. is concerned, I wouldn't want to miss a single day. Even after I have immersed myself deeper and deeper in this project, which began in 1996, it is important to me to say once again:
“What an impressive, admirable project. I have the utmost respect for what we have all achieved together!”
A very turbulent year in global politics is coming to an end. There is a lot going on. What is certainly worrying for all of us is the unrelenting unrest around almost the entire world and its economic impact.
The next few years will be challenging. Let's hope together that democracy will prevail and that politicians will be better able to take us people with them again in the future.
But there are also good things to report. All over the world. In the Nice View in Kenya. And here in Germany too.
As Julian Nagelsmann said so wonderfully in July: “...stick together in this wonderful country and don't always paint everything so extremely bleak”.
Right now, we should - and perhaps even need to - stick together even more and move even closer together in order to tackle the challenges that lie ahead of us in the coming years.
In the early hours of February 29, a woman with two small children suddenly appeared at the entrance to our Nice View Children's Village. Our staff immediately took care of the three of them and took the very small two-year-old boy, who was malnourished and not yet able to walk, and his eight-month-old malnourished sister into their care.
In the conversation with our social workers Doris and Gladys, the woman called Patricia, who comes from the bushland of Lunga Lunga Sub-County on the border with Tanzania, told us that she had found the children of their mother locked up in a house without food.
Our new arrivals have developed wonderfully in the meantime. Both have become permanent members of our family.
Once the funding was secured, Edi started building the extension to the Nice View kindergarten in the spring, including a social office and a school office. The construction work started by Edi was completed in June of this year under the supervision of Gudrun and Denise. A big “Chapeau” at this point to our two strong women.
The planning phase for Nice View Day Care's second major renovation/new build project began in spring. The status quo is that the day care center is currently housed in an old temporary building with a makuti roof (palm leaf roof), which partially collapsed in the night of April 2 to April 3 due to a heavy thunderstorm and very heavy rain. No one was injured and Edi and his team immediately repaired the roof provisionally. This event made it clear how important it is to implement this building project. With the expansion of the Day Care, we are creating additional jobs that give the residents of Msambweni the opportunity to pursue their work. In Kenya, too, both parents now have to work to cover the family's living costs. Single parents should also be given the chance to return to work.
We hope to be able to implement this project in 2025.
Another plan in Nice View is to convert the “old” social office into a mother-child room. Mother-child conversations will then no longer have to take place “between the doors” somewhere in the hallway or in the kitchen. A retreat for the children is also planned, where they can read, play or just hang out. The dilapidated makuti roof will be replaced with a corrugated iron roof with wooden cladding from the dining banda to the kindergarten.
We hope to be able to implement this project in the near future.
Due to the changing weather conditions, the makuti roofs no longer last as long as they did 20 years ago and are also very flammable. Nice View would like to gradually convert all roofs to corrugated iron with internal wooden cladding.
Nice View has been working for several years to increase knowledge about permaculture for vegetable and fruit cultivation. In 2024, we continued to test and optimize. The basis for successful harvests is a fertile soil. After weeks of trial and error, Gudrun and the gardeners discovered that fermented seaweed provides the ideal nutrient for successful harvests. For a few weeks now, the farm project has been producing incredible harvests of tomatoes (sometimes 200 kg, sometimes 250 kg), peppers, spinach, lettuce, melons, pineapples, mangoes, bananas, etc., which will make Nice View much less dependent on buying expensive fruit and vegetables in the future. Unfortunately, the monkeys have also noticed the great harvest results. In recent weeks, Nice View has been planning and calculating the greenhouses that are to be built on the various cultivation areas over the next few months. Organic quality for the Nice View children, far away from chemicals for a health-conscious diet. This is the basis for a healthy future for the entire Nice View family. At the same time, it creates jobs in Msambweni. The children learn the all-important vegetable and fruit cultivation to prepare them for an independent life later on. And Nice View achieves a reduction in the cost of buying vegetables and fruit.
On April 3, I made my way to Msambweni with, among other things, 100 bars of soap in my luggage, which come from a Ugandan development aid project and are supposed to help against malaria. Nice View started testing this soap in mid-June. In September, Gudrun told me that there had not been a single case of malaria in the past few weeks. What a wonderful success. The production of this soap is possibly the next project to be set up in Msambweni.
25 years of Nice View - “Nice View Evening” - on April 13 there was to be a surprise party for the Dürr family.
“It doesn't matter when you lose someone, it's always too early and it always hurts.”
After my arrival in Msambweni, I discussed a lot with Edi and visited our current construction site. In typical Edi fashion, he raved euphorically about possible further construction projects.
Back at the Nice View construction site on Monday morning, he suddenly said that he had a stomach ache and needed to go home quickly and lie down.
Marcel booked a flight at very short notice. When it landed in Mombasa shortly before six the next morning, Edi was unfortunately no longer with us. Edi had been taken by the angels during the night. I can't believe how quickly that happened. There's no doubt that Edi left behind a big hole. But he also left behind two very strong women. Denise and Gudrun filled this hole together with their strong Nice View team and let us continue to look to the future with great confidence.
I find it admirable how the two of them, Marcel and the entire Nice View team manage to keep “the Nice View work” so perfectly organized.
The Nice View Clinic has already treated 10,080 patients from January to October 2024 and has become an important medical component of Msambweni.
On October 7, Nice View received a call from an employee of the youth welfare office in Diani with a request to take in a child. She reported that a father had left his child with a woman a few days ago and wanted to pick it up again in the evening after work. The father did not come back that evening or in the following days. Even with the help of the police and the youth welfare office, the father could not be found. One of our social workers immediately made her way to Diani to pick up the child from the police station. The social worker and the two-year-old boy arrived back in Msambweni at around 8 p.m., where the new arrival was immediately warmly welcomed by our Nice View family. If neither the father nor other family members who could be connected to the child's care can be located by the police, the Nice View social workers will take further steps to clarify the child's legal well-being and long-term care at Nice View.
Since the middle of the year, concrete plans have been underway to upgrade our homepage to a current webspace system. This is very costly and takes a lot of time, but is also absolutely necessary, as our outdated system can no longer meet future requirements and also to achieve better visibility on the World Wide Web in the future.
Gudrun and Wiebke continue to work diligently and meticulously on Gudrun's book project “Erbe an Nice View”. We are still looking for sponsors and for a contact to an agent or book publisher to whom we can present Gudrun's heart project.
Our vision for the next 25 years of Nice View is to create prospects in the country of origin, maintain what has been created and promote projects for refinancing.
Staff housing (more on our homepage shortly), our farm, the clinic, the carpentry workshop, the tailoring workshop, the soap project - all these are opportunities and possibilities to put Nice View on an even more secure footing in the future. Together with the high aspiration to prepare the ever-increasing responsibility of the Nice View protégés for real life out there with a good education and a healthy self-confidence.
THANK YOU to the many Nice View visitors in 2024.
Many THANKS to you and all the kind people who have stood by our side for so many years and who continue to support us.
The success of our joint aid project would be unthinkable without your financial support. Every little help enables us to maintain and improve the care of the children at the desired level and to be able to react flexibly to extraordinary situations.
One person alone cannot carry a roof. Stay with us as the bearer of the big roof over the Nice View projects. Transparency creates trust and in Nice View GUESTS ARE ALWAYS WELCOME. Feel invited at any time to come and see what has been achieved with your support. The Paradise Garden team looks forward to seeing you. (www.paradise-garden.africa)
You can find more detailed information on some of the topics mentioned here and other exciting stories from Nice View on our website www.kenia-hilfe.com under “News”. Of particular note is a recent interview with Mr. Francis, a state-employed social worker who wanted to know what happened to the baby found on a garbage dump in 2015. (Click here for the radio play - A miracle - )
We are also always happy to receive a personal message from you.
Dear godparents, sponsors and friends, thank you from the bottom of our hearts for your support, Asante Sana!
We as the Board of Directors wish you and your loved ones a relaxed pre-Christmas season without hectic and stress, happy moments as bright as the starry sky, a reflective, merry Christmas and for the New Year, above all, lots of health, happiness, serenity, fun in life, screaming moments, thinking about yourself, definitely walking barefoot through the rain again, doing something “not quite normal” and lots of exciting things with great moments.
Best wishes from Roggenburg
Matthias Braun (1st Executive Board)
Christoph Kast (2nd Executive Board)
Marcel Dürr (Treasurer)
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