22 years on the board, more than 40 years with Cap Anamur

Dr. Werner Höfner, a long-standing member of our board, is stepping down from the Cap Anamur board after 22 years. We would like to take this opportunity to thank him and look back on his special connection to our organization.

Thank you, Werner!

We would like to express our heartfelt thanks to Dr. Werner Höfner for his long-standing and influential commitment to Cap Anamur. For more than four decades, he has supported and helped shape the organization’s work from various perspectives. In doing so, he has not only participated in numerous missions as a doctor and helped develop projects, but also served on the board of directors for over 22 years.

His experience, his commitment to the projects, and his perspective on the work on the ground have helped shape Cap Anamur over many years and contributed to the organization’s continued development. Even though he is now stepping down from the board, Dr. Werner Höfner remains connected to the “Cap Anamur family.”

The future is also in good hands: Simone Ross will succeed Dr. Werner Höfner on the board. She has had close ties to Cap Anamur for many years and knows the organization from a wide variety of perspectives. Through her fieldwork, she has experienced firsthand what our work on the ground entails and how important it is to treat people with respect, empathy, and practical assistance.

Simone Ross has been working in a pediatric intensive care unit in Bonn since 2009 and has been involved in Cap Anamur’s health projects since 2015. She has gained valuable experience in our project work during assignments in Sierra Leone and Uganda, as well as during a six-month assignment in Bossembélé, Central African Republic, in 2023.

We are very pleased that Simone Ross will be bringing this experience and her personal connection to Cap Anamur to the Board of Directors in the future. With her approach, her longstanding ties to Cap Anamur, and her firsthand insight into the work on the ground, she is a wonderful addition to our team and a fitting successor to Dr. Werner Höfner.

Wir freuen uns auf unsere gemeinsame Zukunft und möchten außerdem sagen: Danke, Werner, für deine 22 Jahre im Vorstand und für mehr als vier Jahrzehnte Engagement für Cap Anamur.

A Personal Retrospective by Dr. Werner Höfner

Dear Donors,

After 22 years, my time on the board at Cap Anamur is now coming to an end. My involvement with this organisation, founded by Rupert and Christel Neudeck, began with my first mission in 1983 in Chad, a country ravaged by civil war. Since then, I have been able to work in the medical field, coordinate and develop projects in 17 of a total of 62 project countries. It has been an incredibly long time during which I have been privileged to be part of Cap Anamur’s success story. Yet Cap Anamur’s fundamental philosophy has remained virtually unchanged: providing rapid and effective on-the-ground assistance, whether in times of war or natural disasters, and, building on this, establishing meaningful and sustainable structures.

As example, I would like to mention one of my ‘favourite projects’ from recent times: our mission in one of the world’s poorest countries, the Central African Republic:

Back in 2013, whilst the country was still in the midst of a brutal civil war, mainly between Christian and Muslim militias, we kept the collapsing healthcare system for the population running in three hospitals, and continued to improve and expand it in the years that followed. In addition, we rebuilt primary schools that had been destroyed and, most recently, established a secondary school, primarily to enable girls in particular to receive a solid secondary education. All this was achieved with minimal red tape and without any flashy advertising campaigns, but with great courage and dedication on the part of our committed staff.

This work has only been made possible by you, our dear donors, who have generously and consistently supported all these projects with your donations since Cap Anamur was founded in 1979 – I would therefore like to express my very special thanks to you.

The large Cap Anamur family, to which I am happy to continue to belong and which has been an important part of my life for decades, can rightly be proud of this achievement.

Werner Höfner