German beggar to teach church fundraisers the art of begging

Nico Garves, 32, was a seaman on cargo vessels until he became sick, lost his job and began hanging out with his buddies in front of the local supermarket. He started begging money from passersby, investing it into food for his pet dog and alcohol for himself, the daily Hamburger Abendblatt reported Friday. Along came Andreas Boehmeke of a Hamburg company, Komm-Consult, that normally offers public speaking courses and seminars for sales executives.

He developed a project for the preacher seminar designed to benefit everyone involved: get a new job for a beggar, impart fundraising knowledge to the preachers and gain publicity for himself. The Hamburger Abendblatt showed pictures of a ragged-looking Garves getting a new outfit in a clothing store. His new job is to start in ten days. "We met only yesterday, at a bakery," says Boehmeke of the young beggar, expressing confidence in his project and claiming he collected 30,000 marks (15,000 dollars) with a similar idea recently.

Margot Kaessmann, Protestant bishop of Lower Saxony state where the preachers college is situated, says she does not know the project. "It seems macabre," she says. Ulrich Hermannes, of Bahnhofsmission, a church-related social organisation that offers shelter to the homeless at railway stations, says: "I doubt whether the project is going to work out and whether it is ethically responsible. There is so little room for the human element."

(la/dpa)