In the autumn holidays of 2015, the then principal Ms Engel visited Fairview Primary School in Grassy Park during a private trip. She agreed with Mr de Wet – the Fairview principal – that the two schools should enter into a lively exchange in the future. In spring 2016, “simple” pen-pal friendships were started with second grade classes. Unfortunately, parcels were lost in the post and so it took until January 2017 until the children in Richterich finally held photos and small letters from the partner class at Fairview in their hands. Fortunately, project leader Norbert Kuntz flew to Cape Town twice in 2017 and was able to “play” the postman.
Ms Dickmeis and Mrs Mohamed, the class teachers worked intensively to continue the partnership and their third grade classes became the focus of the exchange in 2017 and 2018.
Norbert Kuntz supervised a suitcase exchange project in 2017, where first the children in Aachen packed a trolley with typical things from their suburb Richterich, Aachen and Germany for their partner class, and then 3 months later they received a packed suitcase from Cape Town with typical things from Cape Town and South Africa. With the items from both suitcases, the children from the partner classes could tell their friends and learners from other classes about the other country, the city and the children from the partner school.
In the summer of 2018, the German children made a video film with Norbert Kuntz about their life at their school and in Richterich – in English! The film was shown at Fairview in October 2018 and was received there with great enthusiasm. The Fairview children thanked the Germans in December 2018 with a musical video Christmas greeting.
Unfortunately Mr de Wet and Ms Dickmeis resigned in 2019 and since then the partnership between the two primary schools is dormant. Hopefully after the pandemic someone will wake it up again…
