Gisbert Dreyer
Burkina Faso - An Affair of the Heart
From: V.I.P.ReiseMagazin, 02/2010
Travel with Gisbert Dreyer to Burkina Faso and you will experience how a man who appears to be a serious, cool and successful Munich-based businessman can be transformed into a different person. A person who returns excited and full of anticipation. This profound connection to Dano and its inhabitants has existed for many years. The region in the south-west of the country is firmly anchored in his heart, and Gisbert Dreyer has been devoting himself to its development with passion and great dedication. He has made it his personal mission to support these people on their path to a self-determined life.
Gisbert Dreyer has been supporting the people in Dano for many years. The success of his work is largely due to communication, upon which the Foundation director places particular significance.
Gisbert Dreyer is accustomed to decisively rolling up his sleeves and getting down to work. For him, as an academically trained architect, the world consists of acting and doing – the foundation for changing and implementing things. This has been his principle over a long professional career, and it has always helped him in making things happen. Thanks to hard, conscientious work, this ambitious engineer has earned considerable recognition during numerous activities in Africa, Asia, in the Arab world and, later on, at the helm of German real estate companies. Since 2000 Gisbert Dreyer has been presiding over his own planning company, realising such large-scale projects as the Marstallplatz in Munich. This business success has provided the now independent real estate developer with the financial freedom for his involvement in Africa.
The impetus for Gisbert Dreyer's efforts in Burkina Faso, one of the world's poorest countries, came from an irrigation project in the Dagara region. A dam with a water reservoir was to be built in order to ensure a steady water supply during the devastating dry seasons. In 2001 Gisbert Dreyer realised this project as a planner and financier. During the on-site work many essential tasks emerged in the struggle against poverty and famine, which the politically concerned businessman Dreyer then took upon himself. He wanted to support the people in Dano on a long-term and sustainable basis and thus founded the Dreyer Foundation in 2001. Since then, the Foundation has been investing not only in water projects but also in schools and training facilities, health care programmes, research projects and farm cooperatives. In order to plan for the future, the advancement of children and young people is always at the centre of these activities.
Gisbert Dreyer is particularly proud of the secondary school that his foundation has developed in Dano. Director Salfo Fayama regularly reports to him from the field on the latest activities there.
Gisbert Dreyer wishes to use these projects, which are focused and concentrated on Dano, as an example for long-term development work that can have an impact on other regions as well. His central goal is to enable the Burkinabé to improve their situation by their own efforts and to overcome their poverty. In order to create the conditions for this, he places his focus on advancing the economic situation. Informed by the notion of holism, the Foundation's broad-based projects operate on several levels in order to allow for the programmes' results to interact with one another. A team is working in the Foundation's own CENTRE, where it helps realise self-appointed tasks on a local basis.
Gisbert Dreyer and architect Formouzere Zala (left) survey the construction site of the new école maternelle in Dano. With this project, the Dreyer Stiftung will be providing 270 children with the opportunity for early childhood education starting in late 2010.
People respond to Gisbert Dreyer with trust and high appreciation. This is due to the Foundation director's great dedication of time and finances, as well as to his communication style. He places high significance on the cooperation with the inhabitants of Dano as well as all other local partners. Projects are implemented on a 'with and for one another' basis and are regarded as a dialogue on equal terms. Not least, the Foundation has succeeded in communicating the great potential of its activities and in advancing Dano's development by centuries. The strength of this agriculturally significant region has been increasing ever since the Foundation was created. This fills Gisbert Dreyer with pride. This is evident when, relaxed and pensive, he observes the fields behind the reservoir, with their high yields the year round, and the colourful hustle and bustle in the inner courtyard of the secondary school he developed. In these moments it becomes clear that for him the future of Burkina Faso is an affair of the heart.
