5 February 2005 – this day everything is different: well over a thousand people have assembled in the valley, including many guests of honour. The inhabitants of Wolkabella can hardly believe their luck. Cheerful whistles, shouts of joy, laughing children – a true firework of elation echoes from the cliffs as Karlheinz Böhm inaugurates the 100th school by Menschen für Menschen.

“You opened the heavens. A whole life long we were forgotten!” says the old farmer Abdi to Karlheinz Böhm before the assembled guests. “I can’t even remember the last time a government representative came to us – even the wind blew over our heads! But then you came, and now we even have our own school!”
Nowhere is the craving for learning more evident than here. Hundreds of children came even before the school was finished. Classes had to begin before the school was completed. Today about 450 children attend the primary school, consisting of two buildings with eight classrooms, an office, sanitary facilities and teacher accommodation. These apartments provide an incentive to four state-paid teachers to work in the remote region.

The new school was funded by way of a bet. In the spring of 2004 the people of the Main-Franconia-Rhön region had taken up Karlheinz Böhm’s challenge: “Let’s bet that one in three of the region’s inhabitants will not donate a euro for building a school.” By raising over € 300,000 Euro, they caused Böhm to suffer a crushing “defeat”. For the people in the remote region of Wolkabella the outcome of this bet meant a major step towards a self-determining future.