The main aim of this initiative is to create environments that nurture the multifold needs of growing children. Young children need a safe, clean place to learn in. They need to be eating nutritious food. They need quality educators to grow their capacity for learning.

Since moving to South Africa and to Hamburg in 2005, creative Parisian, Frank Danais, has turned a simple residential garden into an organic world of wonder. Frank and his assistant, local gardener Princess Khaka, spend every minute of the working day committed to discovering new and better ways of growing a large variety of nutritious vegetables, herbs, fruits and other plants. The garden uses zero pesticides, and nothing that is not freely available to the local Xhosa people in the area. The aim of this garden is to develop localised organic methods of growing what is needed to feed a family with their own nutritious fruit and vegetables, and to share this knowledge with the whole community.

The Keiskamma Music Academy was founded in 2006 by Helen Vosloo. Helen is one of South Africa’s leading classical musicians. She is principal flute with the JPO and COSA and is sought after as a soloist and chamber musician. She is a member of the acclaimed Trio Hemanay, with whom she has toured Europe, the USA, and recently released an album to great acclaim. Her cross over collaborations venture into jazz and the African singing tradition.

With the help of two British students, Tom Georgio and Johnny Hyams, a Capoeira Dance group was formed amongst the youth in Hamburg.

Capoeira is an Afro-Brazilian blend of martial art, game and dance. It was begun by African slaves in Brazil in the sixteenth century, but has evolved into a very popular activity amongst youth across the globe.

The idea of the Heritage Initiative encompasses pre colonial life, it encompasses the last 100 years that the Eastern Cape experienced not just a struggle for the land but a whole era of social, religious and economic change. It’s about remembering and sharing all of these stories, recording and treasuring customs and beliefs not just of that of the Xhosa but also of the Germans that Settled here in 1856. This reminiscence is important not just in terms of the remembering the past but in deepening an understanding of the present.