While planning our big 2020 tour to South Africa, the planning team expressed the idea that we should also support a local social project as part of our trip. We are in the privileged situation that we can financially afford such a trip and therefore we also have the moral obligation to give something back to the country for its hospitality.

Children are the future of every country. Therefore, the idea was obvious to support a project that focuses on the development of children.

Since our start and finish point was Cape Town, we looked for a project in in this city so that we could get a personal picture on site.

Our research led us to the Vulamasango project . Vulamasango means “open gates” in the Xhosa language and was founded in Cape Town in 2009 by the German social worker Florian Krämer.

Since 2018, Vulamasango has been a state-recognized Child and Youth Care Centre (CYCC) , a “children’s and youth home” – the politically correct term for an “orphanage”.

Check out Vulamasango's website – it's more than impressive what Florian and his team have accomplished in the past 11 years.

We visited the project on our last day of the tour and were able to gain a personal impression on site. We were shocked by the children's stories, some of which Florian told us only vaguely, and we were enthusiastic about the work of the entire project. The joy of the children and young adults was overwhelming and left none of us untouched.

The tour participants, along with some very generous club members, collected and transferred a total of €7.500 as a donation to Vulamasango. Even more importantly and sustainably, however, the visit and the impressions gained on-site have led several of the tour participants to become long-term supporters of Vulamasango.

A big thank you to all supporters and donors and we wish Florian Krämer great success in his work on a small part of the future of South Africa!

Peter Kistner