Hello everybody !

Welcome to the Humaninano mission !

We are 4 friends from an engineering school who graduated in September 2018 and we plan to go to Namibia for 2 months next summer to Windhoek in order to offer a musical and academic education to young Namibians from the poor suburbs of the capital. We will work with the young Namibian orchestras (the YONA Association) and the Bernhard Nord Camp (BNC) and we would like to raise funds to finance this mission and donate instruments (cellos), giving young people a wider offer of free musical education.

This project, born when we were all 4 students at ISEN Lille, matured during the summer 2018 through long research and discussion. Last October we finally decided to go to Windhoek where two associations: YONA and BNC work according to criteria and values in which all of us wanted to invest in.

YONA

The Namibian Youth Orchestra (YONA) is a Windhoek-based association which provides musical education to disadvantaged young children. It is inspired by the «el Systema» movement created by José Antonio Abreu in order to overcome the social and ethnic divisions through the creation of orchestras. It supports students between 6 to 24 years old and integrates them into different orchestras or musical groups according to their level. Every day after school, young musicians can have music lessons with teachers and go to concerts

The program is for children of all ages, but the more the children grow up the more individual lessons and mentoring become necessary. Part of the success of such a program is based on frequent contacts inside the community. The main goal is to reach economically and socially vulnerable children; but the program remains accessible to all Namibian young children, regardless of belief, ethnicity, gender or financial means.
YONA is a music school whose ambition is to transform the lives of young people through music, to create in a sometimes difficult daily life something which unifies them, submerges them and pushes them upwards. The mission of this association is to propose an intensive musical program that develops a sense of responsibility related to membership and correlative commitment, teaches the importance of teamwork based on solid ethics, and promotes self-confidence and good citizenship. The fundamental principle is to grow children first and music second.

This project makes sense to us, as we are convinced of the importance and impact of musical education in the development of children. It seems to all of us that it is even more ambitious and necessary in Windhoek. When classical music and orchestra trainings sometimes seem to be part of the territory of a social elite, the YONA project gives to those who could not consider the possibility to step into this territory.
Part of the group will participate in the musical teaching and events of the centre by giving private lessons and accompanying young musicians during the orchestral rehearsals. We will also play in concerts in Windhoek to raise funds for the association. Since YONA and BNC are linked, we are in discussion with the associations to be able to be present with the two associations on weekdays, splitting us into 2 groups or alternate our presence in both places.

You can learn more about the YONA project on their website:
https://www.yonamibia.org/

As the association lacks means to provide instruments for all students, we would like to make a donation of cellos to the association (see details in the budget). The price of these instruments makes them especially inaccessible in Namibia. In this way we want to participate at our scale in order to promote education through music, universal language and link between people, beyond material problems. This also contributes to the expansion of YONA association, allowing them to welcome more young students.

The BNC

Father Bernhard Nordkamp arrived in Namibia in 1986 and, throughout his fifteen years of dedicated service, he focused on the fate of children, especially those in the Katutura suburbs in northern Windhoek.
Today the camp is headed by Marybeth Gallagher. She has developed the camp’s activity to transform it into a reception and school support centre for young people from disadvantaged backgrounds or who are dropping out of school. The atmosphere at the BNC reflects the conviviality, mutual respect and politeness that all the children of the camp learn to respect and pass on to the newcomers.

You can learn more about BNC on their website:
http://thebncnamibia.com/
We will accompany personally the young children on school or extra-scholar subjects in order to make them grow, to give them confidence to build a future beyond a situation that they often envisage as a dead end. This long-term work of education allows us to invest ourselves humanly through direct and daily contact with children. We hope that the educational model that we will try to represent and that the image we convey will enable them to take control of their future, of their family and their country to make of it an example of development in solidarity.
We will therefore visit this centre next summer for 2 months every afternoon of the week from 1 pm to 6 pm to welcome these young people. We will use our university study skills to help them with their school subjects. We will also spend time with them doing sport, music and games, sharing values of respect and support.

The team

We are a team of 4 young engineers nicknamed the Nano because we formed together the class of Nanosciences and quantum physics in our school.

Olivier: “The first step to reach a better world is to give everyone the chance to develop through a good education. This experience in Namibia will also allow me to open up to a culture and realities that are far away from my daily life. I would like to bring the skills I have learned at home, in school and among Scouts to serve young people who need or want it.”

Justin:” I would like to take some time to help people in need whose country does not allow them to escape precarity. I dream of enabling young people to grow in a passion that could be born during our mission. Travelling Namibia will allow me to have clearer ideas about my choices for the future and perhaps go further in this direction.”

Ugo: “Since I was a kid, in a family with 6 brothers I was raised with values of sharing, communication and mutual aid. Today, finishing my engineering school, I seek through my experiences to learn from the people I meet, to teach and to share what touches me every day. This project in Namibia offers me the opportunity to give the maximum of myself, to open up to other cultures and to serve with my skills the people who need it.”

Nathan: “This solidarity project will be an opportunity for me to give back a bit of everything I have received over the past 23 years to people who really need it, and to contribute to the future of young people through what I prefer: music. This life experience may allow me to change my plans for the future and find my way.”

Humaninano project