Donations and Support

Without the monetary assistance from various concerned persons and organizations, MgM could not function at its current level. The German government and the Netherlands’ government helped to fund MgM’s Angola project. MgM has formed partnerships with a variety of governments and companies to offer the most cost-efficient and clearance effective services to mine-affected countries. MgM works in cooperation with Windhoek Maschinenfabrik (WMF) and the Namibian Defense Force (NDF). To reduce costs, MgM obtains its armored vehicles from Namibian scrap yards where its personnel can locate war vehicles discarded from previous conflicts. In addition, the U.S. Department of Defense and the SCF US donated cast vehicles to MgM for use in its Angola project.

The MaM System

MgM’s policy of safety, quality, transparency, nonprofit innovations and observation is evident in its work. Specialists at MgM designed a mechanically assisted manual demining (MaM) system to ensure the safety of its personnel and the people returning to mined areas. This system consists of a Wolf III Turbo armored vehicle and is equipped with a vegetation cutter, which enables deminers to manually clear the land. The MaM system is followed by a MaD system, which consists of mine-detecting dogs. The last phase of MgM’s layered technique is the QaM, an armored grader that scrapes the ground surface of cleared areas for passive quality control. MgM favors a layered approach to demining to guarantee the safety of its staff and people returning to their homes.

MgM Projects and Activities

MgM focuses its operations on measuring the social impact toward mine clearance and the rehabilitation of infrastructures to permit the safe return of displaced persons. Its activities include demining work in Angola and Namibia. German Ambassador to Angola Helmut van Edig requested MgM’s assistance to reconstruct numerous mined roadways, bridges and community areas in the Bengo Province of Angola to facilitate Angolan refugees’ return to their country. Because of MgM and other humanitarian organizations’ efforts, 50,000 displaced persons returned to Angola after seven years spent in refugee camps.

Presently, MgM is in the planning stages of preparing survey operations in Africa and Central America and urges people to remember “with all [the] pride and joy about these hybrid and low-tech products and projects, it must [be] kept in mind that the purpose of both are to clear landmines and UXO.”