{"id":132,"date":"2016-06-06T19:10:10","date_gmt":"2016-06-06T17:10:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.vostel.de\/en\/?p=132"},"modified":"2024-09-09T17:48:07","modified_gmt":"2024-09-09T15:48:07","slug":"meaningful-study-trips-to-berlin-volunteering-as-a-possibility-to-experience-the-other-sight-of-the-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vostel.de\/blog\/en\/meaningful-study-trips-to-berlin-volunteering-as-a-possibility-to-experience-the-other-sight-of-the-city\/","title":{"rendered":"Meaningful Study Trips to Berlin: Volunteering as a Possibility to Experience the other \u201cSight\u201d of the City"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Benedetta Caputi<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Brandenburg Gate, Holocaust Memorial, Eastside Gallery, a stroll through the hip neighbourhoods of Kreuzberg and a long night at Watergate. This could be a typical schedule of a student trip to Berlin. Students take pictures and get a lot of new impressions about the capital\u00b4s history and its highlights. But not everyone gets to see and experience the less popular sides, the “other sights” of Berlin\u00a0\u2013 not to mention the possibility to give something back to the city.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why we from vostel.de<\/a> started our student volunteering programme. The aim is to allow students to better understand Berlin\u00b4s inner identity, which is seldom visible at first sight, while getting involved in local communities in order to help people in need through volunteering activities.<\/p>\n

The students taking part in our programme usually all have the following things in common: They\u2019re super enthusiastic, curious and overall willing to do something good for society! Consequently, our main concern is to perfectly match the students\u2019 interests and talents with the organisations\u2019 needs, to make sure all the potential is exploited to the full.\u00a0 Therefore, the organisations involved in our programme are heterogeneous in terms of size, aim pursued and topic covered and offer a big variety of volunteering activities. Moreover, all of them are open to welcome students from all over the world and clearly see the benefits to incorporate people from different (cultural) backgrounds to their work.<\/p>\n

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To give an insight to the great achievements done by the students that are involved in the programme, we\u2019d like to share one of our very first experiences with the wonderful students from Hogeschool van Amsterdam <\/a><\/span> who are in their second year at the faculty of Social Work. Through their one week study trip to Berlin, they had the opportunity to practically experience different, complex and challenging environments outside their city and therefore outside their \u201ccomfort-zone\u201d. Probably, a possibility like this should be given to every student who\u2019s focusing his or her studies on social work, in order to give them the chance to deal with different realities, backgrounds and identities.<\/p>\n

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In particular, the included projects in the students volunteering trip were:<\/p>\n