AIDS-Waisen- und
Schulprojekt in Sambia
Schulprojekt in Sambia
In the late 1990s, Zambia gave its permission to start nonpublic, open schools that were going to be supported by the community or an independent organization. Suddenly, the missionary couple Kristina and Traugott Hartmann, who are ministering in Zambia on behalf of the Mülheim Fellowship of Churches(*), saw a new opportunity to meet the challenges of the increasing problem of AIDS-orphans. And so in 1998 they founded the first Christian based school for AIDS-orphans and poor children in the township „Buyantanshi“ of the provincial capital Kabwe. Out of this emerged the name „Buyantanshi Open Christian Community School“ (BOCCS).
Since 1998, the school project BOCCS for AIDS-orphans has gradually been developed and extended.
The first of the eight schools was opened in May 1998 in Buyantanshi, under the supervision of the German missionaries Traugott and Kristina Hartmann, who work together with the Christian Community Church in Zambia. The project was mainly financed by LIFE TRUST, of which Rev. Hartmann is the director. The pattern of open community schools had been introduced to Zambia a few years earlier. In March 1997, with the help of UNICEF, the Zambia Community Schools Secretariat (ZCSS) was founded as an umbrella organisation for community schools like BOCCS. With its application to ZCSS for full membership in 1998, BOCCS had a legal basis for the establishment of the schools.
In July 2001 Martin Hartmann became project manager (till June 2005) and from September 2002 to June 2005 Andrea Hartmann took over public relations and sponsorships for orphans.
From June 2005 to June 2006, Steffen R. took over the responsibilities for the BOCCS orphan/school project and was joined by his wife Christel Riegsinger in September 2005.
In July 2006, Diethelm Hartmann assumed the responsibility of BOCCS Coordinator from Steffen R.