Skills Knowledge Awareness

Timbuktu in the Valley hosts 100 children and young people on a daily basis.

Besides providing a space equipped with arts and crafts resources, sports equipment, games, puzzles and digital devices, we run daily workshops in different fields like bicycle mechanics, cooking, arts, karate, robotics or knitting. Our programs intend to expose the young community to skills and knowledge, while creating awareness about the world at large and the systems we are parts of.

We encourage independent and self-directed learning.

A holistic learning approach helps us to provide the children with the best possible learning outcome. We are tired of feeding into cycles of generational dependency and inequality and are on a journey to radically challenge and soften the status quo. We try to develop our programs by living in the neighbourhood, observing the circumstances and interacting with the young and old people we serve. Crime, poverty, loss of direction and the resulting psychological impact this has on children and humans are a reality in the lives of the young people we work with.

All our activities aim to support them to change the odds of the next generation. Whether this is through practical and life oriented courses, the underlying message that a self-determined, safe future is possible, or simply, love and care.

We

  • provide a space for the children to develop and enhance skills in various fields, where they can thrive and be socially conscious young people.

  • raise people who can sustain themselves and their communities, lift themselves out of poverty and be citizens who can inspire others and bring change to their neighbourhood.

  • offer skills development in subjects such as up-cycling, gardening, cycling, cooking and coding as well as classes in entrepreneurial and economic skills or children’s rights.

  • collaborate with professional artists and makers from he neighbourhood and around.

  • believe in a holistic learning approach. Arts and environment, performance and physical activity, up-cycling and bicycles, they all form part of the same mission which is putting efforts into living sustainably and conscious of our planet's and peers' wellbeing.