‘We are pleased that we can help children through our partnership with Plan. Plan and Voelkel – they just fit perfectly’. (Stefan Voelkel)
Since 2007, our family-owned company has been closely cooperating with Plan, the international children’s relief organisation. We are supporting various projects in developing countries with the sales of our 7-Dwarfs-Juice for children as well as of our dragon fruit products. In this way, we contribute to the sustainable protection of the environment as well as the improvement of the living conditions of people in developing countries.
Through our cooperation with Plan we have, for example, been in a position to provide three day-nurseries in Brazil with furniture, toys and other necessary items. In the framework of another project, in the Pune district of India, about 4,000 students at 200 schools along with their teachers have created school orchards, in which they planted fruit trees and medicinal herbs. In addition, they participated at a ‘healthy diet’ workshop. In Paraguay, we are supporting the school-garden project Health Food: The home-grown fruits and vegetables are used to prepare healthy meals in the canteens of 32 schools in order to improve the diet of 2,232 students. Moreover, we have helped 256 families to create their own gardens, the yields of which they sell, in this way increasing their incomes. These families are given comprehensive training, which enables them to combine traditional cultivation methods with modern ecological principles.
At present, we are supporting our fourth project, called Protecting Children from HIV and AIDS. It is based in the rural Kamuli district of Uganda, where the health care for mothers infected with HIV is improved through various means: Medical supplies are stocked up, personnel in health centres is increased, local information events as well as free medical examination for all community members are offered. Families are given information about new means of income such as the cultivation of fruit or other crops; in savings groups, members learn to handle microloans, which they place at each other’s disposal.
Pascal: ‘I no longer wanted to live. When Plan approached me and offered me to take part at this project, this gave me hope again. Ich have started to take medication and to plant seedlings and fruit trees which were given to my wife. And on top of that they have also given us some goats.’
Plan is one of the oldest children relief organisations and operates in 50 countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America. By means of sponsorships, Plan helps to improve the living conditions of children and their families in developing countries, helping them to help themselves – irrespective of religion or politics. In the framework of development cooperation, Plan finances sustainable and child-oriented self-help projects, in the first place through sponsorships as well as individual donations, public funding and cooperations with companies.
