Short-term (2 to 4 weeks) "study/educational" projects in Germany

Work: Volunteers are invited to contribute to a ‘poetic wall-news sheet' in the village. It's motto will be "Imagine: Dreams of my tomorrow – Dreams of our world". Doing this requires some talent for designing and painting. Participants should bring on some poetry or song lyrics that fit to the motto.Participants who prefer to do manual labor, are invited to do some garden work or help with renovating another room in the center.

We will learn some essentials of peace work and get basic non-violent conflict management training. In the second week we will visit the former concentration camp of Bergen Belsen, and have some lessons on European history in the first part of the 20th century. Volunteers will have the opportunity to spend an evening in a German family and reverse, the group will invite the people of the village and region to an "Evening of encounter" (Abend der Begegnung) in the rooms of the Peace Center.

The accommodation of the participants is carried out in rooms with 4 beds each.: Please bring sleeping bag with you. Food will be prepared together in the kitchen of the seminar house.

Leisure Time: In the leisure time, the group can use facilities of the seminar house and make an excursion to Hannover or Braunschweig.

The Peace Center is at the verge of a village with about 2500 inhabitants. The Peace Center is near the historical location where in 1553 a battle took place. Sievershausen lies 30 kilometers east of the Lower Saxony provincial capital Hanover on the freeway to Berlin.

Please bring sleeping bag with you

18-26

Sievershausen

English, German

HAJ: Hannover (Hannover, Germany)Vegetarian food will be available

Volunteers will be working in small groups in forestation, harvesting, or the maintenance of the museum grounds. No special knowledge required; volunteers will be directed by trained staff. Work will be confined to the morning and volunteers will have the rest of the day for other activities. However, some work may exceed this target and require a full work day (i.e. harvest). In this case the next day may be taken off. Matching with this year's exhibition theme of the museum - "Childhood" - volunteers should organise a small program about popular outside games played (counting-out rhymes, etc.) by the children in the countries they come from; this should occupy approximately 15-20% of their total work time at the camp. The program will be presented on August 12 at the museum.

A small program with guided visits to parts of the museums is organised for the volunteers. The leaders of the camp will introduce the participants to sites of nature, culture and relaxation in the city of Detmold and beyond. At least one long hike to important sites is planned for the weekend. Volunteers are asked to introduce their countries to the other participants by bringing photographs, maps, handicrafts, music, etc. Can you teach a song in your language? If you play an instrument, but cannot bring it with you, please let us know.

Participants are hosted in a newly reconstructed building within the museum grounds. Due to the special national significance of the museum, this is a non-smoking workcamp; the consumption of alcohol is not allowed anywhere on the premises of the museum after closure in the evening. All participants are required to stay for the whole duration of the camp. The camp is self-catering; volunteers will cook for themselves choosing from the provisions on a daily basis. Participants are asked to bring a sleeping bag and a camping mat. There is no WiFi on the site.

Study & Leisure time: A small program with guided visits to parts of the museums is organised for the volunteers. The leaders of the camp will introduce the participants to sites of nature, culture and relaxation in the city of Detmold and beyond. At least one long hike to important sites is planned for the weekend. Volunteers are asked to introduce their countries to the other participants by bringing photographs, maps, handicrafts, music, etc. Can you teach a song in your language? If you play an instrument, but cannot bring it with you, please let us know.

Detailed Motivation-letter required: All volunteers are asked to write a text about their interest in this project and their expectations. If you are thinking about applying for this camp, please read more information at https://www.icja.de/index.php?id=1725.Solid footwear is required for all outdoor work in the museum grounds. Volunteers should bring some warm clothing as the accommodation block is not heated and night time temperatures in August may drop to +12 degrees Celsius. Sleeping bag and a camping mat is needed.

18-50

Detmold

English, German

HAJ: Hannover (Hannover, Germany)Vegetarian food will be available

Work part: Although the main task will be studies of history, manual work like gardening, maintenance work and cleaning-up of specific areas of the memorial are planned.

Besides the manual work the study component will be an important part of our project. Volunteers will learn a lot about the time of National Socialism, the Holocaust and also something about the period after World War II especially the Soviet camp Sachsenhausen until 1950. Guided tours in and around the memorial site Sachsenhausen and excursions to different memorials and places of earlier German history are planned. Volunteers will have the opportunity to work in the exhibitions and in the library of the memorial site. Furthermore there will be several discussions with employees who perform guided tours and are involved in historical research. The international volunteers with their different backgrounds will inform the group about the memories and commemoration in their countries.

You will be accommodated in a youth hostel, 2 km away from the memorial centre. Self-catering.

Brandenburg, Oranienburg, ca. 33 km to the north of Berlin

For this project it is necessary to have good or very good English skills!!! German skills are beneficial.Please prepare at home a short presentation about your country, including the history of your home country and the view on German history.A motivation letter - specific to this project- is required.Volunteers should be able to ride a bike, because various shorter and longer bicycle-tours are planned.

18-26

Oranienburg

English

During the first week of the workcamp, you'll be spending your mornings in an intensive German language course (2 x 90 min. per day), in order to develop your knowledge of conversational German used in daily life as well as how the language itself works. The language teachers are native speakers who have experience teaching German as a foreign language. Despite this course, you're still all part of the group during the first week. In the second and third weeks, you and your team will be helping with maintenance work on the graves of war victims at Reinickendorf in North Berlin. There are both German and non-German soldiers and civilians, for whom a war grave cemetery was created. Together with your team you'll be helping to mow and restore grassy areas and, amongst other things, cleaning gravestones and concrete frames.

You'll be sleeping on mattresses on the floor in a scouts' house in the Alt-Tempelhof district of Berlin. You'll prepare and cook your own meals together in groups.

Berlin offers a wide range of free-time opportunities for any time of day. In order to accommodate the many different interests of your team, you'll receive a Cityticket which can be used for all public transport across Berlin, valid for the duration of the camp.

300€ extra fee for the language course and Berlin Cityticket.A basic knowledge of German is absolutely necessary for this workcamp.

18-26

Berlin

English, German

BER: Berlin - Metropolencode (Berlin, Germany)Vegetarian food will be available

Hamburg-Wilhelmsburg is the biggest river island in Europe and an ever-changing multicultural part of the city. Many different kinds of projects and events both big and small, such as the Hamburg international building exhibition (IBA), the Hamburg international garden show (igs), Dockville/Artville and 48h Wilhemsburg have influenced the many different places, people and themes of the Wihelmsburg district. Even the accommodating and integration of a diverse group of people who have fled their home countries is keeping the people of Wilhemsburg busy. Within the structure of this media workshop, your task is to use film to represent what is so particular about Wilhelmsburg and how people who live and work in the district deal with the socio-cultural and social changes and challenges in the area. Led by an experienced media pedagogue, you will develop your ideas for interviews, learn different camera techniques and how to cut and edit scenes. At the end of the project you will show your finished product in a self-produced programme, which will be shown in the TIDE TV television channel in Hamburg. In contrast with other ijgd media workshops, we are already providing you with the topic for filming. Have a look at the websites listed and think about whether you would like use film to represent how projects, events, and socio-cultural and social changes can influence a district. We would ask of you to capture many different voices and pictures, to promote the idea of giving a voice to people, who are usually very seldom heard. http://www.hamburg.de/wilhelmsburg/ http://www.iba-hamburg.de/en/iba-in-english.htmlhttp://www.hamburg.de/igs-2013 http://en.msdockville.de/ http://www.wilhelmsburgonline.de/

In the youth centre and media education centre, there is a very strict no smoking and no alcohol policy.

You will be sleeping on air beds in a modern youth centre, located around 5 minutes away from your workplace (a media education centre). Meals will be prepared and cooked together in groups.

You'll be staying in the youth centre and working in the media education centre in the Wilhelmsburg district of Hamburg. From there you can easily get to know the second largest city in Germany with its many tourist attractions. At the weekend, it's worth taking a trip to the Nordsee or Ostsee lakes.

You will need a good level of English for this project and should also be interested in cinema.

16-26

Hamburg

English

HAM: Hamburg (Hamburg, Germany)Vegetarian food will be available

The project will consist of two parts – a practical working part and a study part. The practical working part, which will take place at different parts of the site, will last six hours per day. In the evenings and during the weekend there will be time for the educational and cultural activities. The participants of the Europe Heritage Volunteers Project will work as well at Reiche Zeche as at Lichtloch VII. At Reiche Zeche they will uncover a water-column machine from the 18th century currently covered behind a dry stone wall which has to be taken away for safety reasons. Aim of the works is to document and preserve the water-column machine for educational purposes. Therefore the participants will clean the area and excavate the water-column machine, transport the waste material to the surface and sort the excavated stones to re-use them at Lichtloch VII.Furthermore, some of the participants will work in another part of Reiche Zeche in order to prepare the construction of an access to the neighbouring former mine Geharnischt Männer. The mine workings are not accessible at the moment, the ladders are in bad condition. Last visits in 1998 showed that the place will provide a lot of archaeological findings from historic mining periods, at least from the 16th century onwards. Aim of the works is to open up the mine again as an archaeological training field for students. Therefore it is necessary to transport material to enable the re-opening to this area, in particular to transport ladders through the narrow adits below the surface to the shaft and to transport waste material stored in the adits on the way back.At Lichtloch VII the participants will restore the capping of the wheel chamber with gneiss stones. The capping of the wall remains have suffered from weathering and several stones are missing. In some cases the arches of the openings are not preserved. During the last years, the responsible local Mining Club VII. Lichtloch has collected numerous rubbles (Freiberger Gneiss) which can now be used to restore the walls. Additionally, the stones which will be saved from the works at Reiche Zeche will be re-used. The stones will be embedded in mortar and the recessing joints will be filled in using small stones.The participants will sort and square the rubbles stones for the walls, prepare the surrounding area, reconstruct the arches, complement missing parts, supplement the walls of the wheel chamber up to twenty centimetres and grout the capstones for the brick wall's top edge.

hared rooms with beds, warm showers, toilets,The meals will be prepared together as they are part of the community life, what means that every participant will be responsible for the meal at least once during its stay. So it would be very nice if the participants could bring typical recipes from home in order to introduce each other to the preparation of food from all over the world.

In 1168, the first discovery of silver ore in Freiberg had a profound and lasting effect on the development of the region. Located in a Central European mountain range on the border of Germany and Czech Republic, the region has played a major role at certain times in the output of tin, silver, cobalt, caolin and uranium in a global context. The rich ore deposits gave the region its name Erzgebirge (Ore Mountains). Mining was for centuries the key industry forming an exceptional transboundary mining cultural landscape with all its typical surface and underground installations, mining towns and natural features as well as the associated intangible values.Located in the Freiberg mining district, the Reiche Zeche (Rich Mine) mine is one of the oldest silver mines in this area, first documented in 1384. In the following centuries, several other shafts developed in the neighbourhood. At the end of the 18th century, all shafts were combined under the name Himmelfahrt Fundgrube (Ascension Mine) which developed in the 19th century into the biggest European silver mine with over 2,800 miners and an output of 448 tons of silver between 1840 and 1896. With the decline of the silver price since 1873 the number of miners was step by step reduced and in 1913 the mine was closed. Today, the Himmelfahrt Fundgrube is a modern research and teaching place for the Technical University Bergakademie Freiberg and also a visitors' mine where tourists can visit underground structures of the 14th to the 19th centuries.The Rothschönberger Stolln (Rothschönberg drainage gallery) is regarded worldwide as the final point of the technological development of trans-regional water-adits. Constructed from 1844, it is the most important and deepest lying adit system of the Freiberg mining district still in operation today. Eleven Lichtlöcher (shafts) were deepened to advance the gallery. Located on a large heap, the Lichtloch VII is a well-preserved example of these shafts including the hoisting house with adjacent wheelhouse, the mine forge and the powder house. Today, a local mining club carefully maintains the site and presents it to the public.

CV + photo, Motivation letter related to the project required

18-99

Freiberg

English, German

DRS: Dresden (Dresden, Germany)Vegetarian food will be available

A motivation letter - specific to this project - is required.

In this year, the project in Ravensbrück will continue to connect practical work and study with youth meetings.In the memorial, there are many possibilities to read about the history of the women's concentration camp and about the background of fascism. Volunteers can use materials from the library and the archives in different languages. A main topic for the study part will be the special camp, where the participants work. A "Listening Lab" workshop is planned (Sound Installation), for four days. An artist will explain and coordinate the workshop. His intention is to focus on not only seeing but also on listening to the former place of the Nazi time and the nowadays Memorial. What can we hear, which sounds are we creating ourselves? Please bring along an object, which you would like to integrate into this sound installation and / or a musical instrument. You will also participate in the 13th "Ravensbruecker Genereationenforum", a meeting with former inmates from Israel, Hungary and England, from 15 to 18 August. Other participants will be another workcamp and students from Poland and Germany. Your sound performance will be presented in the Generationenforum. The group will do some maintaining work on the area of the women's concentration camp. There are many different tasks to be done: cleaning the area of wild growing vegetation, environmental work and investigation work. Your help will be needed to clean sculptures, to prepare a working site and to do other works outside.

You will live in a youth hostel near the Ravensbrueck memorial. The rooms are very comfortable; a maximum of 4 persons will live in one room. Shower and toilets are next to the rooms. Bed linen will be provided.You will be catered for.

Brandenburg, Fuerstenberg/Havel

For this Workcamp it is necessary to have very good English skills!

18-26

Fuerstenberg/havel

English

Germany is often praised by other countries around the world as being a leading example when it comes to energy consumption. It pretends to be climate and environment-friendly with its energy consumption, yet at the same time the three major German lignite districts are the largest CO2 source in Europe. Come and join the climate camp in the Rhenish lignite mining region, taking place this year for the 8th time. This year's climate camp will take place from 18th to 29th August in Rhineland. During this time you will be able to take part in a diverse programme of educational and cultural events as well as demonstrations and other movements. The De-growth Summer School will also be a guest again at our camp this year.During your work and study camp, you'll firstly be helping to set-up the climate camp and the de-growth summer school – building the compost toilets, solar-powered showers and the camp infrastructure. Besides this, you'll be getting involved with the climate camp, the De-growth Summer School and also the region itself with its causes and effects of climate change and with possible alternatives to an ever growing economy.Prosperity implies growth, as the saying goes. However, this way of thinking has contributed to the overload of our planet. The ecological crisis is a result of limitless economic growth. The climate camp will take place in the immediate vicinity of a lignite mine. You will meet people, who have lost everything due to the mine, but you will also get to know exciting projects, in which people organize their own vegetables and electricity. During the camp you will have the opportunity to try out a more sustainable lifestyle, by eating a vegan diet, for example.

www.klimacamp-im-rheinland.de For info about the De-growth Summer School, go to: www.degrowth.de/de/sommerschule-2017/(in English: http://www.klimacamp-im-rheinland.de/en/ https://www.degrowth.de/en/summer-school-2017/ )

You'll be staying in tents, on thermal mats and in sleeping bags. The camp will be catered by the VEGAN kitchen of the climate camp. You will take it in turns to help out in the kitchen.

The work and study camp offers you the possibility to participate in the diverse education programme of environmental topics and a 'better life', in protests and also in the cultural programme. You can also join the workshops, lectures and events in the climate camp and summer school. Besides this, you could also go on trips to the nearby towns of Cologne, Mönchengladbach and Düsseldorf.

You should be interested in protecting the environment. Basic living standards (such as warm water) will not always available, with so many people camping. A good level of English is needed for the workshops.

18-26

Mönchengladbach

English

NRWVegetarian food will be available