Hi, I am Nicola, most people call me Nico.
“I am passionate about sports, healthy lifestyle, community development and adventures. I am a former Bundesliga handball player and have been an athlete all my life.”
Before founding the sports and youth development organisation PlayHandball ZA in 2013, I volunteered with a similar organisation in South Africa in 2009. The experience changed my life. Not immediately, but it had an impact and motivated me to move back to South Africa in 2012 and follow my passion for sport and development.
In my community work ventures, I realised that development starts with people, motivated and kind-hearted people who want to make a difference. And as a team sports person, I know that nothing is possible without a team. There may be great technology, but especially in sport and development, we need people to hold it all together and help us grow and succeed.
When I started PlayHandball ZA I had no resources. So I reached out to other people to volunteer with us and help us grow the idea of handball in South Africa. People behind other small community-based organisations outside of South Africa reached out to me to access resources, in my case know-how, equipment and people to help develop handball.
I saw the need for skilled volunteers to help the projects and therefore the local coaches and coordinators to develop the sport. This is where the idea of COACH ABROAD came from.
Having volunteered in the Cape Flats around Cape Town myself, I have worked with PlayHandball ZA for over a decade with people and grassroots organisations in South Africa, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Botswana and beyond. I have learnt a lot about the needs and challenges of sports projects.
I look forward to using this knowledge to help create meaningful experiences for volunteers overseas with COACH ABROAD. I want to bring people together in community-based organisations and help these organisations provide more sporting opportunities for children and young people in their communities.
- Former German Handball Bundesliga player
- Founder and director of the non-profit organisation Play-Handball.org
- Expert, freelance consultant and lecturer on “Sport (for) Development and Education for Sustainable Development” (ESD), with a special focus on handball
- Consultant and project manager in international development cooperation for the German Olympic Sports Confederation (DOSB) and the German Development Cooperation (GIZ)
- Lecturer at Leuphana University on ESD in sport
- Initiator of the first handball and education tournament series in South Africa
- Publisher of the game collection “Umwelt bewegen” (Moving the Environment)
Hi, I am Ronny.
“Travelling is an education, it encourages creativity and breaks down prejudices. My aim is to encourage young people to go out into the world in order to see different perspectives.”
As a freelance graphic and web designer, I have been lucky enough over the last few years to be able to follow my passion: Being a digital nomad and visiting different countries and cities around the world. Along the way, I have found my second great love, a place that fascinates and inspires me time and time again: Cape Town.
The chance to see, explore and learn new things has changed and shaped my perspective on many things in life. Apart from hours of travelling and missed flights, hostels in big cities that were far too noisy, dicey situations in dark side streets, numerous sunburns or unfamiliar street food followed by upset stomachs, I would do it all again. Not everything, of course, but most of it.
This has included the ‘survival training’ in unroadworthy taxis in the smoggy centre of Cairo, tasting unfamiliar fried insects in local markets in Bangkok, and sampling long-aged rums straight from the distillery in Barbados.
It has also included surviving the sweltering heat of Dubai and California’s Death Valley without sunstroke, visiting the excavations of Pompeii, walking for hours through the centuries-old buildings and streets of Rome, Athens and Istanbul, or simply marvelling at the fascinating art museums of Venice, Madrid and Florence.
These included neck pain from constantly ‘looking up’ while exploring the streets of Manhattan, driving through the road deserts of Los Angeles and San Francisco during rush hour, hiking down the Grand Canyon in Arizona or experiencing the ‘what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas’ feeling in the world’s most surreal city.
This has included accumulating tens of thousands of road trip kilometres on my speedometer on the sand and gravel roads of South Africa, Swaziland and Namibia, dodging wild hippos and elephants on the Okavango, and driving from horizon to horizon between Melbourne and Sydney without encountering a single kangaroo.
There was also the incredibly fascinating and historic visit to Jerusalem with its thousand years of controversial history, the wild taxi ride along high concrete walls to Bethlehem in the West Bank or my birthday party with friends on the shores of the Dead Sea.
But it also included what was probably the most important and memorable stop for me personally: visiting the Birkenau extermination camp and the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland – a place you should visit at least once in your life, if possible.
Discovering unknown and “exotic” countries and wandering through neighbourhoods or hiking trails off the beaten track is, on the one hand, extremely exciting and fascinating (although it is not always advisable and can sometimes be dangerous). On the other hand, it often reveals the darker side of the country or city you are in. However, it is these darker sides that can be very instructive and opinion-forming, and often make you see things in a different light that might annoy you at home.
With my work at COACH ABROAD, I want to encourage young people to go out into the world, to develop an understanding of other ways of living and behaving, and to discover and experience new things. Combined with the aim of doing good, a several-month adventure abroad is extremely valuable for young people and can leave a lasting impression. Both for themselves and for the children and young people they can support with their sporting expertise in one of the social projects.
