Hello, my name is Bilal Kassim!

I work as a teacher at a school and teach primary school children. I also sometimes help out in the kindergarten. I love children and I really enjoy playing with them and teaching them. After the regular lessons I am also a sports teacher and teach other activities.

I love doing sports myself, I especially enjoy soccer and handball.

My hobbies besides sports range from painting and crafting with natural materials to writing stories. I am a person who enjoys working with my hands.

But my biggest passion is watching soccer matches.

I got to know Kirsi in 2018. She was sent to our school to volunteer with us. I was assigned to her as her supervisor and was supposed to support her with questions or problems.
She is a wonderful and kind-hearted person. We had a lot of fun together and quickly became friends. We chatted a lot and realized that we have many similar thoughts about the world, cultures, politics, society and faith.

We also realized that we both had a special joy in seeing other people happy. I love working with people and helping them here and there when I can.

We often talked about the abuses and corruption that happen in Ghana and how it annoyed us that it was almost impossible to defend ourselves. 

Kirsi and I had a lot of fun together. I was sad when she flew back, but we kept in touch.

One day she called me and told me about her idea to do a benefit concert to raise funds. Kirsi told me that she would like to come back to Ghana and carry out a project. Then she asked me if I would like to help her. I was delighted and was immediately on board! To carry out a project to support underprivileged people! I was thrilled! 

Finally, we started the first project together with the village. We built a school building in Adigbor Tornu. It was very exhausting, as I had to teach at school for the first half of the time until the vacations came. The project was an hour away and I had to commute back and forth by motorcycle every day.

Another challenge was the village, they often didn't act as I had hoped.
But in the end we made it and now the children have a school building that doesn't get rained into. You can find more information about the project here.

I was so passionate about it and worked so much that I quickly became a project partner.

My tasks in the projects are to translate and to be the networking partner. I also organize all the materials. When Kirsi is in Ghana, we go shopping for the materials together. When she is in Austria, I clarify every purchase with her beforehand over the phone.

Sometimes I also work on the building, as there are some skills that the villagers don't know but that I have learned.

We have also carried out other projects since then. Most of the time, Kirsi saw something wrong somewhere and asked me if it would be possible to fix it. That's how we always came up with new projects.

Since Kirsi has been in Austria, I have been contributing ideas and sending photos of the specific deficits in a village.

Once I had to travel on private business to various villages I had never been to before. As a result, I saw an impoverished Muslim village called Tapa. I wanted to do something positive there and suggested a book project to Kirsi. More about the book project in Tapa here.