Nunhems Foundation

Since December 2003, the Nunhems Foundation has been supporting health, education and agricultural projects around the world, with the goal of helping people help themselves. The Foundation's geographical scope reaches from Ecuador to Burkina Faso and Benin, from Palestine to India and Indonesia. Here are just some examples of the Foundations’ activities:

Giving homeless children a chance (Burkina Faso, West Africa) Béog Koamba (Children of Tomorrow) is the name of a center for homeless children in Kaya, a small city in Burkina Faso. It was opened in 2007 and it offers 36 street children aged 12 to 15 a home. The children are taught writing and reading, sewing and woodworking. When they reach the age of 18-19 years, they receive a small amount of money and/or materials to be able to support themselves through a small business of their own.
Monique Wolters from the Dutch foundation for children in Burkina Faso ("Stichting Kinderhulp Burkina Faso") was enthusiastic about the project’s success in giving the children a better start in life. To support future funding, she suggested that the Nunhems Foundation sponsor the making of a documentary about the center. The video is available under www.childrenoftommorrow.com. We hope that it will help the Béog Koamba center to reach a broader audience, securing the necessary funds to sustain the initiative.

		Starting a vocational training center for the blind (India) When the NGO “Nathru Educational Public Charitable Trust for the Blind” decided to start up a vocational training center for young visually disabled adults in Bangalore, Girish Kumar Krishna, Genetics Scientist at Nunhems India, submitted the project to the Foundation Board. The NGO plan focussed on providing training in plumbing, electrical engineering, screen printing, knitting and book binding.
The Nunhems Foundation sponsored the necessary tool kits, training material and housing for the students. The products manufactured through the vocational training program have been sold at exhibitions and to vendors, with the proceeds given back to the students as a salary.

“Water Harvesting” (Benin) For two years the Nunhems Foundation has given a donation to a small farmers’ irrigation project in Benin, in the village of Kpabegou. The project was initiated by a group of customers of Nunhems France, who decided to support the development of this small scale project. Water is life in this part of rural Africa and the donation helped to provide the necessary tools to dig a water reservoir. In a next step, the farmers dug the irrigation canals. This modest facility will allow them to practice ‘water harvesting’ to save water from the rainy into the dry season. To the farmers, this makes all the difference: They are no longer dependent on rainfall, and can grow their crops all year round.

		Fatima Centre Bangkok (Thailand) Following a proposal from a Nunhems Netherlands employee, the Nunhems Foundation in 2005 granted a sustainable donation to the Good Shepherd Sisters in Bangkok for the construction and replacement of buildings for the Fatima women’s Self-Help centre. The congregation of the Good Shepherd Sisters responds to the needs of the distressed, emotionally wounded, lost, isolated and those who cannot make it alone in life. The specific orientation of the Sisters is to girls, women and children who urgently need help.
Answering their needs has led to the establishment of the Fatima Centre, a mothers and babies home, residential care for teenagers at risk, leadership training for women from the villages and adult education classes. The centre is situated in Bangkok in a slum area. The centre’s aim is to provide employment to approximately 120 women. Taught the skills of sewing with machine and by hand, the women produce beautiful handicrafts. The products have gained international recognition which is a source of encouragement and dignity to the workers. Sales are made through orders, local markets and now a shop in the heart of Bangkok. The existing building in which the women are working is subject to flooding in the rainy season (6 months per year). One wall serves also as the outer wall of the compound, running along the road. The ceiling is low and with the oppressive heat of Bangkok, ventilation is insufficient. Due to the lack of land, the decision to demolish the original “shed” and reconstruct a suitable building on the site, appeared to be the best solution.

Control of Fusarium wilt and other diseases in bananas (Indonesia) Small farmers in Indonesia depend on the cooking bananas as their main crop. When the destructive Fusarium disease threatened their staple in Sumatra, Dr Ivan Buddenhagen, emeritus professor in international agriculture at Davis University, called on the Foundation. The Foundation Board decided to support a research project to improve disease control of the cooking bananas.
The most exciting result was the discovery of a so-called budless mutant in a village at the island Sulawesi. This mutant hampers the insect-transmission of the devastating Ralstonia bacterium to such a degree that the mutant is almost immune to the disease. In the meantime, hundreds of mutant plants have been produced through in-vitro tissue propagation and donated to farmers on the island Kalimantan. Next year the farmers will tell us whether this unique approach has solved the 'blood disease' problem, allowing them to re-start their export business to the island Java.