Goodbye to DRC’s Oma Container

The DRC School Project and Community Centre hosted a special ceremony to bid farewell to their containers after 20 years, symbolising a new beginning for the school, which has been operating from refurbished containers. Major plans are in place to build a two-storey school as an extension to the Open Door Educational Centre (ODEC) Swakopmund, set to be completed in January 2026. This will be offering children of the DRC community schooling from Grade 1 to Grade 12, Mike Kriner, the founder, shared his story: "I worked at the skydiving club. I&#039;m sure the youngsters have seen the airplanes take off at the airport and drop people out of the airplanes, and they come and land at the airport. I used to do that when I was younger. On one misty Tuesday morning, I landed in the DRC because the wind and mist came in, and I couldn&#039;t see the ground and was disoriented. As soon as I landed and picked up my parachute, I was suddenly surrounded by a whole lot of kids that just came out of nowhere. It was about 10 or so in the morning, and I thought to myself, there are a lot of children here. Why are they not at school? And I kept that in my mind," Kriner said.A few months later, they spoke to the community to see if there was a demand and what was needed. They walked the streets and spoke to some of the counsellors and the community. They found that there were not always enough places for children. Come grade one, there were long queues. The government does its best, but they have challenges that need to be addressed and that’s how they started thinking about putting up a project.Kriner mentioned that while the idea was there, the usual missing elements were finances, land, water, and buy-in from all the stakeholders. “We went back to the municipality, went to the planning office, and they allocated four urban plots to us. So, we had land. That was a good starting point. We worked on a movie, &#039;Flight of the Phoenix,&#039; a big Hollywood production. When the movie was over, we took the containers that were at Rossing Mountain, put them onto a truck, and drove them into the DRC, putting them down on the ground. And that was how we got our buildings to start,” Kriner explained.He continued by saying that after dropping the containers, the real work began. The containers were empty, and they had many ideas but not a lot of funding. They had a whole lot of peaches in tins, old clothes, and palm hearts. “The movie people gave us almost a container full of peaches, palm hearts, and all the clothes from the movie. The community could not be paid in money, so our currency of the day was a tin of palm hearts or a tin of peaches. After about three months, people didn&#039;t want to eat the peaches anymore, so we had to try and get bread somewhere to feed the community and us.”Kriner noted that the community really bought into the project. They had people who helped from day one, and everything that was done was voluntary. People worked with them without getting paid because they believed in the importance of providing an education. To provide an education, they needed to get the centre up and running. This happened over many years, and gradually, the project grew bigger and bigger.The non-profit organisation Tangeni Shilongo Namibia, in partnership with Werner Erkes Foundation, will be rebuilding the DRC School Project and Community Centre into a two-storey building. This will be an extension of the existing school, the ODEC Swakopmund project situated in Tamariskia, Swakopmund.As a result, the centre will be able to offer Grade 1 to Grade 12 with both schools once the facility is completed in 2026. The building will comprise eight classrooms, a kindergarten/preschool, a fully functioning library on two floors, an auditorium with a stage and gallery, a kitchen, a workshop, a flat for the janitor, and a playground. Construction is set to start in mid-June 2024.

Goodbye to DRC’s Oma Container

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Republikein 2025-04-02

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Goodbye to DRC’s Oma Container

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Republikein 2025-04-02

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