3 days in Berlin

(Jonathan)

Our last week of YSI work in Frankfurt is almost over and at the moment we’re doing final preparations for our graduation workshop. However, the first 3 days of this week we didn’t spend in Frankfurt, but instead in Berlin for our last team project in Germany’s capital.
We mainly worked together with the UFAfabrik, an organization that is part of the IFS network which we are already connected to in Holland – actually they organized most of the program for us. We also had the chance to do a project with a contact Verena met at her Salto training in Portugal.
Basically we went from one organization / institution to another and got shown around… from “Nachbarschaftstreff” for families over to a little “animal farm” for kids to a “youth club” for teenagers. I was very happy that we could have Manfred Fiedler with us, a young and excited social worker who took us from one place to the other and even did some sightseeing with us on the first day. He was maybe just a few years older than we, but very much into different social projects already and it was inspiring for me to see another young person doing so much in that field.

My favorite project, though, was when we could tear down an old hut of a playground for kids at a Jewish kindergarten because it was no longer safe for the children. This was with the person Verena knew from Portugal and after she showed us around a bit, we grabbed some tools to disassemble the wooden building into its components. Everybody enjoyed doing some proper work and we had a lot of fun.

I think it was really nice for all of us to have this last project in Berlin, to see a new city, and to get to know some new people who were very enthusiastic about our work and inspired us to keep it up.

-A nice project in a nice city that will mark the end of our YSI year.