Pledge 1% - We lend a hand for Better Place Africa

Since 2017, Scandio supports the charity campaign Pledge 1% , which was initiated by Atlassian, Salesforce and Rally in 2014. The goal is to donate 1 percent of equity, working time or a product to a non-profit project. Scandio opted for “1% Time” and thus each employee can contribute to a social project of his or her choice during working hours.

Better Place Afrikv - Donations for Nigeria

This time, we choose to support “Better Place Africa”. Organizer Melanie Facius collects donations in kind throughout the year for the secondary school in the villages of Amuro/Mgbom in Nigeria, which is to be renovated and is currently attended by around 1700 students. Twice a year, the donations are loaded into a freight container and shipped to Nigeria, where they are given to local children and families.

Hauling boxes for a good cause

On Tuesday morning, a group of 5 Scandians made their way to Daglfing, where the donations were already waiting to be packed in a container depot. The freight container was all ready, now it was time to load it in a proper and structured way. All in all, about 15 helpers started to pack school bags, bags with clothes, chairs for classrooms, food, monitors, notebooks and bicycles into the container.

But that wasn’t the only thing. According to organizer Melanie, there should also be room for 3 cars in the container! So now it was getting interesting. The first car, a small family van, was still on the loading platform of the car transporter. With the help of winches, three Nigerian helpers skillfully pulled the car into the container, which all the others watched tensely. To make the best use of the storage space, the car was now filled to the top with boxes, bags and suitcases before it was time to move car No. 2. Another spectacle - in order to fit all three cars, it had to be suspended from the ceiling, using the winches again.

Precision work and time pressure

Although things were going well, time was running out. At 4 p.m. the container was supposed to be picked up, but there was still another car and a lot of other donations to be loaded. So the helpers really put their backs into it.

Fortunately, the truck that was supposed to pick up the container didn’t arrive on time, so we actually managed to load everything in time. Thanks to the structured approach of the Nigerian helpers in layering the sacks, bags, suitcases, etc., everything eventually fit into the container and just about every inch was stuffed.

Especially organizer Melanie was relieved when everything was finally stowed away and ready for transport. We were also exhausted, but very happy to have been able to support this project.

We will be ready to join again next year when the next container will be shipped!