About us

About us

The Deutsch-Guineische Gesellschaft (Bissau) e.V (German-Guinean Society, Bissau) is a group of friends of Carlos Robalo – a musician and sportsman born in Guinea-Bissau and based in Cologne, Germany, for more than thirty years. With the help of numerous supporters we have built a school in Guinea-Bissau.

From left to right: Kirsten Nepstad, Max von Velsen, Beate Schüler, Gerhard von Velsen, Ulrike Sieronski, Raoul Mörchen, Claudia von Velsen, Carlos Robalo, Desa Philippi

After the devastating civil war in 1998-99 Carlos told us about the scale of destruction in his home land. And he told us about a small school in a village called Ilondé that he once attended himself and that was now reduced to rubble. In 2001 we founded a charitable society to help the children of Ilondé to go back to school. Carlos’s father, Victor Robalo, offered us a piece of his land as a building site. After we had thoroughly assessed the local situation ourselves we started to build our „Schule für Bissau“ in July 2004. Since then we have extended the complex step by step. We are running a primary school with six classes and a high school for the grades 7 to 9.