Vehicle training workshop enters the next phase

The vehicle training workshop in Ziguinchor is running extremely well. We therefore felt the time had come to officially hand over the project to our local partner.

Workshop employees inspect a car from below.

By Henrik Sauer, Project manager

Bonn, August 4, 2024– Since April 2019, I have been helping to set up and manage the training workshop for trainee car mechanics in Ziguinchor, in the very south of Senegal.

The Green Helmets had built a spacious workshop building with its own water supply on a site belonging to our local partner, the Spiritans, and professionally equipped it with many donated tools.

Over time, a lively workshop operation was established with a local team of six. We are particularly pleased that, in addition to the technical manager and the dedicated mechanics, the team also includes an equally dedicated female mechanic!

We have also achieved our goal of offering sound training in automotive mechanics. Not only is our team continuously trained and we are almost always able to supervise several trainees for one or more months at a time; since 2020, we have been training 35 car mechanic apprentices in three successive levels of knowledge in cooperation with a technical school in Ziguinchor.

The project has now been handed over

There is also a woman among the trainees. She will soon complete the third part of her training with us with an impressive examination and, as a mechanic, will send a strong signal to many Senegalese women (and men) that technical training is not a purely male domain. That makes us very happy!

It was planned from the outset, and this is also the purpose of such a project, that the supervision and management of the workshop would one day pass into the hands of our Senegalese partner. We have been preparing for this for a year by increasingly involving our partner organization in the concerns and supervision of the workshop as well as in the training operation. It is also very nice that the head of the Spiritan Order in Dakar is very interested in the work of the training workshop and its success.

After extensive preparation, the time had come in April: we were able to officially hand over the management of the workshop and the training to the Spiritans. Green Helmets board member Max Werlein traveled to Senegal to discuss the final details with the Spiritans and with me as project manager.

We continue our support

The Green Helmets will continue to supervise and support the project for at least a year, including financially. Now, however, from a distance. The team sends us weekly reports on income and expenditure, workshop operations and the training program. This allows us to stay in contact and answer any questions.

Even though the economic conditions in Senegal are anything but ideal in times of inflation and the resulting increase in poverty, we are confident about the future of the workshop and training. This is because we have a reliable partner in the Spiritans, who sent an extra employee to Ziguinchor for the workshop in October 2023. We also have confidence in the well-established workshop team, which has proven to be very reliable over the years.

Supplement from the Green Helmets team in Germany:

We would like to expressly thank project manager Henrik Sauer for his great work in Senegal! Without him, the project would not be so successful. Despite all the bureaucratic and sometimes political turbulence, Henrik worked tirelessly to make the project a success. He always followed up with those responsible and never let up. Thank you for everything! We would also like to thank you for continuing to support the project from Germany on a voluntary basis!