Home: Freunde Waldorf

A Future Next to The Waste Deposit

Chile: The Kaspar Hauser Development Center is an organization, which unites a kindergarten, a carpenter’s shop and an embroidery workshop as well as a growing library, under the same roof. The initiative works in a very poor part of Santiago. It is the aim, to provide protection and educational aid to children and to offer hand embroidery workshops for mothers, thus giving them the possibility to improve their financial situation.

The contrast could not be missed. In the immediate neighborhood of the growing and developing Waldorf School lived 70 families on a waste deposit. This situation was the initial basis of what is today the publicly recognized NGO (Non-Governmental Organisation) – The Kaspar Hauser Development Center.

Years ago three women, whose children attended the local Waldorf School, began to seek contact to the people living on the waste deposit. Out of this impulse developed a provisional kindergarten, as well as an art workshop and the first embroidery training for mothers.

Now a legal framework was necessary. After the establishment of the organisation, work could be continued. But after another year, several challenges lead to a temporary break of the initiative. Only when a new teacher for childcare was found, the impulse experienced a new promising revival.

In 2003 the local authority, agreed to provide a property for the organisation. However, construction took its time and at some point the initiative lacked the necessary money. Despite all that, construction was finally completed and today the initiative has enough room for the kindergarten and the carpenter’s shop as well as the embroidery courses.

The 30 children attending kindergarten on a daily basis are aged between 3 to 6. Here they take part in a controlled daily routine and receive a meal and the protection they had often missed before joining the initiative.The kindergarten as well as the other offers of Kaspar Hauser Development Center, are funded through membership fees, the sale revenues of several products and further donations.

Empower & donate now
Empower & donate now