By Viola Hoppe | Project coordinator
Dear friends of PaSch,
we hope you are fine and had a nice summer! Our team, mentors and mentees are back in Berlin, many of our mentees were able to visit their parent’s home countries again after a long time. And now, all of them are back in school again and homeschooling seems a long time ago…
During summer vacation our team had the opportunity to take some holidays. But before that and since the end of the vacations, a lot of activities took place. So we will tell you what happened since our last report.
We were able to connect one more tandem in June and this time their first meetings, accompanied by the PaSch team, were a mixture of online and offline meetings. The weather conditions were good and the mentor and the mentee, a 7-year-old girl, were curious to get to know each other in real life. So we decided to have the last of the introductory meetings outside. The tandem signed their contract, even designed it with nice colourful pencils and stickers and developed nice ideas for their following meetings (picnic, visit an animal farm for kids, paint together).
We once in a while receive some pictures of them having a good time together and we are happy to see them doing nice things together.
On the 28th of June, we were finally able to offer a get together for mentors again. Especially our new mentors used the chance to meet. But also some of the “older” mentors wanted to be there and see each other again and talk about their experiences during corona lockdowns and homeschooling. So 5 mentors were able to join us in a park with a little picnic. We talked about the activities the kids liked the most. Some of the new mentors had a hard time to see the living conditions of their mentees’ families (precarious employment, being single parent, not being alphabetized, sharing very small apartments). It is not always easy being a mentor, but seeing the kids smile and appreciating the time they spend together, gives back a lot to the mentors and they learn a lot as well.
In September the project coordinator will go on maternity leave and our two colleagues (Aynur and Stefanie) will continue the project. Almost all our tandems already met Aynur and Stefanie, therefore it is easier for all of them – mentors, mentees, families and our colleagues – to keep up and develop good relationships.
Meanwhile, we also had some more meetings with interested mentors, some of the meetings were online and some of them took place in our rooms. We organized a workshop on 30st of August for 7 new mentors to prepare them for their future function. We were happy to have the workshops in our community centre and because all of us are already vaccinated, we all felt comfortable to meet in a big room.
Some new families showed an interest in a mentorship for their children, so, our PaSch team soon can start matching again and arrange new meetings. We will see what time brings, but we are looking forward to offer those first meetings in our community centre again and are prepared to switch to digital meetings again, if needed. We will tell you in our next report for sure.
On 10th of September, we will have a get together for mentors, mentees and their families, before the coordinator goes on maternity leave. We invited our tandems and families to spend one afternoon in our yard together, eat and drink, play some games, do big soap bubbles, and – have a photographer taking some pictures of our tandems. The pictures are supposed to be a little present as well for our tandems, some of them you will also see on the next report.
We are really excited to organise such an event – after a long time when this had not been possible - and hope, that the weather will play into our hands and we will have a summer party!! We will keep you updated in our next report and send some pictures.
We thank everyone of you for your donation you made – that is why we can offer different activities and continue our work.
If one time you wonder if you can become a mentor at PaSch or friends of you do consider becoming a mentor – just get in touch with us, if you live in Berlin! J www.pasch-paten.de
And all the others – there are a lot of other nice mentoring projects in Germany and in other countries.
We wish you all the best,
your PaSch team
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