In 2017, the Managing Director of the Peter Krämer Foundation travelled to Togo as part of a Bundestag delegation to intensify bilateral relations between Germany and Togo. At the intergovernmental conference “Le printemps de la coopération” in Lomé, the Togolese Minister of Education, Prof. Dr. Komi Tchakpele, asked the Peter Krämer Foundation to build a school in Togo.

Upon his return, Peter Krämer was quickly ready to comply with this wish. At the beginning of 2018 Christian Krämer and Tilo Braune travelled to Togo again to get a more concrete picture of the situation on site. The urgent need was quickly apparent and the learning situation was miserable in many of the visited places.

Competent local partners were found who had experience in school construction, as various visited new schools and vocational schools showed. Through a German NGO with experience in Togo, the DAZ. e.V. and the local partner IT Village, “our” school was subsequently built.

On April 1, 2022, the “Ecole Peter Krämer” was opened with a ceremony in typical African tradition in the village of Nanergou in the poor north of Togo in the savanna region.

A small note: We had opted for a type of school building by the architect Francis Kèrè, who comes from Burkina Faso. A few days before the school opening, it has become known that Kèrè had been the first African architect to receive the Pritzker Prize, the so called “Nobel Prize” of architects, and to announce this prize with “our” school.

Schools for Africa is the most successful private education initiative in the world!

We are pleased to continue Peter Krämer`s mission and to finalize our school construction project in Togo. We would like to thank all donors for their generous support of our work. With the donation sum of a total EUR 100,000 EUR a new school could be built.

In September 2020, the school construction project started in the village Nanergou, in the northern Dapaong region. The local partner is the Togolese NGO IT-Village. Due to their successful construction of an orphanage, a vocational school and four school buildings, it is recommended as a powerful and reputable local partner.

In the meantime, the construction is almost complete. We expect the school to open in autumn 2021. The following are some impressions of our current school building.

In the following, Gérard Fiougou, project manager of IT-Village, reports on the start of the school construction:

“It is always important to us to gain broad acceptance among the population for school constructions, because we need the help of people in the implementation of the building. A mobilization committee elected by the villagers coordinated the participation of the population. The planned process was discussed and agreed on who can help concretely with traditional knowledge, manpower and regional building materials such as sand, gravel, clay and pebbles. For the resulting transport costs, it was agreed that the women would each contribute 900 CFA francs and the men 1,200 CFA francs.

Work began in the first week of October 2020. The site was supplied with building materials. Many people participated in the earthworks for the foundation. Experts produced so-called BTC bricks, the foundation of the base walls was excavated and provided with concrete, probation irons and a self-supporting metal framework. At the same time, metal windows and doors as well as tables, benches, chairs and cabinets were ordered and installed or furnished.

The smooth start of the work showed us once again how expedient it is to raise awareness among the population and to involve as many people from the region as possible in the project. We are optimistic that we will have built a new school in autumn 2021 with donations from the Peter Krämer Foundation from Germany. This significantly improves the educational situation in the north of Togo.

Thanks to all donors!”

In November 2021, our assistant to the management, Caroline Sophie Liebing, received the offer to donate a larger amount of FFP-2 masks for our projects in Africa at a meeting of the Hamburg Wirtschaftsjunioren. We gladly accepted this offer.

We knew about the construction of a hospital near our school project in the north of Togo by the Greifswald entrepreneur couple Prof. Dagmar and Norbert Braun. The joy was great when we were able to offer 10,000 FFP-2 masks from the company Fagron from Glinde near Hamburg for the initial installation of the Hospital Braun in Cinkassè (HBC).

Statement by Caroline Sophie Liebing:

“I am extremely pleased that the 10,000 FFP-2 masks have been put to good use at Dapaong Hospital. The big thanks goes to the network of the Hamburger Wirtschaftsjunioren through which the contact to the donating Fagron GmbH in Glinde came about. It was nice to see how quickly and easily this volunteer organization can bring Hamburg players from different industries into contact with each other.

At the same time, this fundraising campaign shows the agile Cooperation between the Peter Krämer Foundation and the Hospital Braun Cinkassé, which hopefully leads to a long-term good development of the Dapaong region in northern Togo. For this I wish all participants much success and joy in the common work.”

Since a delivery of beds and medical equipment by container from the Port of Hamburg was pending, it was only a small effort to bring the mask delivery on the way to Togo. Weeks later, the masks could be handed over to the hospital and caused great joy among the local medical staff.

On the occasion of our school opening in the village of Nanergou on 1 April 2022, Christian Krämer and Tilo Braune also visited hospital Braun. They were able to convince themselves of the usefulness of the donation and the benefits especially for the surgical field. We believe that this cooperation describes a beautiful practice of mutual support in projects of this kind, which will certainly find imitators.