Education Austria Project #35925

Lerncafe - Free Study Support and Afternoon Care

by Caritas Austria

Project Report | Nov 15, 2022
The Lerncafe family is growing

By Andreas Jagersberger | Philanthropy Officer

Students at LC Amstetten

The aim of the Caritas Lerncafés in Austria is to support school-age children and adolescents, to achieve visible learning successes through their own efforts, to promote and strengthen their German language skills and to cope with school requirements within the required framework. In addition to academic competence, social skills are strengthened and individual interests and talents are made visible.

And the demand for such free-of-charge learning support is growing bigger and bigger. In the previous update report there where 62 Lerncafés operational all over Austria. Today already 67 Lerncafés support in total close to 2,270 children from in total more than 50 different countries of origin.

The following case studies show the impact this support has for individual children and their development.

All children’s names have been changed to protect their privacy.

Bringing stability into their daily life
Eymen is a seven-year-old boy with Turkish roots. When he first came to the Lerncafé, he could hardly express himself in German and had great difficulties in reading and writing. He was often unfocused, restless and showed aggressive behaviour towards other children. Together with his family, the Lerncafé coordinator and the volunteers were able to work out strategies to better support Eymen in learning and social behaviour. Ways were found to enable him to better act out his urge to move. Involving the family proved very positive as it resulted in healthier nutrition, regular bedtimes and suitable leisure activities for the young child. These measures already showed first successes: Eymen can now concentrate better on his tasks, he participated in the discussion of the Lerncafé rules and his aggressive behaviour towards other children has been greatly reduced.

Support children turning their dreams in reality
Amira, a 13 years old girl, was born in Afghanistan and has been living in Austria with her parents and three sisters since 2012. Only since 2021 she started coming to the Lerncafé. She attends the third grade of an AHS (Gymnasium) with English as the language of instruction. In autumn 2021, she and her class took part in the Austria-wide "MORE! Writing Competition" with her class. Amira wrote - with the support of a learning assistant at the Lerncafé - a text entitled "The Idea Which Saved The Planet". And this text was impressive. Not only to Amira and her friends and teachers at the Lerncafé: Of the incredible number of 3400 entries, her text was awarded 2nd place in the Year 3 category by a British jury of experts! What an amazing success for the young girl. She will also finish the year with Very Good in French, her second foreign language.

Support children to thrive in new environments
Khaled, a 12 years old boy, came to Austria from Syria with his family in 2015 and has been coming to Lerncafé Siebenhügel since autumn 2019. He completed primary school with very good grades and has been attending the first grade of Gymansium since autumn 2021. He started the new school year with great commitment, but was very overwhelmed by the new school situation in the first semester. Lockdown and a Corona infection were partly responsible for him losing touch and having several "Genügend" (= just enough) in his half-year report. He was not discouraged, however, and with the help of a very dedicated learning assistant, he really took off again. Khaled’s goal was to finish the school year without a "Genügend" on his report card, and with a lot of hard work and perseverance he really succeeded: In English, he improved from sufficient to good, in German and mathematics from sufficient to satisfactory, and he will also complete the learning subjects with good and very good.

Lerncafés in numbers

Close to 2,270 children and young people are cared for in the learning cafés.
67 Learning Café locations throughout Austria
Close to 1,000 volunteers are currently involved in the Learning Cafés
94% of the children and young people have a migration background
In total children from close to 50 different countries of origin are visiting the Lerncafés
96% of the participants complete the respective school level positively on average
51% girls and 49% boys currently attend the learning cafés

Students thank supporters

Creative afternoon at a LC

Students during leisure time activities at the LC

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Jun 11, 2019
Creating equal opportunities at the Lerncafes

By Andreas Jagersberger | Corporate Fundraising, Philanthropy & CSR

Lerncafe students during recreational activities

During the winter semester 2018/19 the 54 Austrian-wide Lerncafés supported 2,100 children from educationally disadvantaged families, with a special focus on migrant families. Besides the professional employees, all with a pedagogic and educational background, around 830 dedicated volunteers supported the kids in doing homework, preparing for tests or reading together in order to further improve the German language and reading skills. We are especially happy about the expected success rate of our students: We assume that about 98 % of our students attending the Lerncafés will get a positive school certificate at the end of the school year.

To give you a better insight what the support in the Lerncafés means for one specific student, we want to share an actual case study from a Lerncafé in Carinthia with you: Abdel (the beneficiary’s name was changed to protect his privacy), a 13-year-old boy from Syria, who attends the second grade in secondary school, has been coming to the Lerncafé Concordia in Klagenfurt for little more than a year now. Abdel came to Austria in 2015. First, Abdel attended the summer school at Lerncafé Concordia for six weeks in the summer of 2017. From then on he regularly visited the Lerncafé. Abdel has already been graded in the previous school year, but most of his grades were poor due to his difficulties in understanding the German language. Through the support of the dedicated Lerncafé team he was able to improve his grades at the end of last school year. In his latest school works before the semester break in February 2019 in the subjects English and math Abdel even achieved the grades “good”, whereby he only marginally missed the distinction “very good” by one point in math. Abdel is a very dedicated and highly motivated young boy who integrated himself very well into the Lerncafé Concordia as well as his school surroundings.

In Austria the official school-year ends with the end of June, so the children's well deserved summer-break is already around the corner. We wish them all the best for the final tests and exams and of course a great fun time with their friends and family!

Lerncafe students preparing the healthy snack

Lerncafe students enjoying an excursion

Links:

Description of the Caritas Lerncafes (German only)

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Feb 4, 2019
Update on Lerncafe activities - WinterTerm 2018/19

By Andreas Jagersberger | Corporate Fundraising, Philanthropy & CSR

During the winter semester 2018/19 (ranging from September 2018 to January 2019) the 54 Austrian-wide Lerncafés supported 1,950 children from educationally disadvantaged families, with a special focus on migrant families. Besides the professional employees, all with a pedagogic and educational background, around 780 dedicated volunteers supported the kids in doing homework, preparing for tests or reading together in order to further improve the German language and reading skills. We are especially happy about the expected success rate of our students: We assume that about 97 % of our students attending the Lerncafés will get a positive school certificate.

To give you a better insight what the support in the Lerncafés means for one specific student, we want to share an actual case study from a Lerncafé in Burgenland with you: Zahra (the beneficiary’s name was changed to protect her privacy) is a 12 years old girl from Afghanistan and attended the fourth grade of elementary school when she first visited the Lerncafé about a year ago. She is very hardworking and inquisitive. Despite her good cognitive abilities, Zahra had considerable problems in other school subjects due to her limited understanding of the German language. As a quick solution, the team of professional pedagogues and dedicated volunteers of the Lerncafé has created individual worksheets for Zahra in German and Math. The volunteer supporting the Lerncafé-students, a retired teacher, has studied German intensively three times a week in private lessons with Zahra, with an enormous and very gratifying success. The effective solo-sessions and her own progress with the German language aroused her interest in children's books massively and she even became a member of the local city library. Zahra’s vocabulary has been steadily growing ever since. In June 2018, she has graduated from the elementary school with positive notes in both math and German and was able to move on to the next schooling level, meaning the transition to NMS (new middle school). Since September 2018 Zahra is now attending the NMS, has way fewer problems as she can better understand the schoolwork and the tasks given. In mathematics, where she was unable to solve a problem on her own a few months ago, Zahra has now successfully passed her first tests of the new middle school and will finish the current winter semester 2018/19 only with positive grades in her school certificate.

In Austria the very well deserved one week semester break is just around the corner for our Lerncafé-students. We wish them all a great fun time with their friends and family and wish them the best of luck for the next semester!

Links:

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