Finding + supporting mentors for pupils in Berlin

After springtime was full of events, workshops or visits to theatres, we started more easygoing into summertime. So this report will be shorter, but there are still some things to tell.

First of all, we would like to give you an impression about our annual festival for the neighborhood organized by our community center. Like every year, we invited our neighbors and all the people and families taking part in our projects or visiting our offers – so we were able to welcome many people to our long table. We offered a buffet and all the guests shared their food with each other. Some of the kids groups that practice in our community center performed on stage what they learned so far. So we saw the younger kids of the music school, than different dancing groups and some kids showing circus performances. We also had 4 musicians playing meanwhile. For the kids, we offered e.g. a table, where they can paint and draw their personal summer pictures, a table full of books for free as well as a map of their neighborhood, where they could put their painted house/school or kindergarten built by themselves of old boxes. We also offered face-painting, which is always very popular not only by kids but also by adults. We had a nice festival and also some mentors and mentees visited the event.

Some of our tandems told us about their latest highlights we would like to share with you, because thanks to your donations we can support such activities. One mentor and her mentee visited the aquarium, it was really great, so they stayed some hours, not only because it was raining outside. Another mentor visited with her mentee and with 2 other siblings the museum of natural history and where really impressed by the skeletons of the huge dinosaurs. One mentor and his mentee visited the show “the Wyld” in Friedrichstadtpalast, which is the biggest European Revue-Theatre. They enjoyed the famous show and where happy to see the show with all the acrobatic tricks and all the fancy dresses.

One mentor after more than a year in mentorship invited his mentee to Milano for one day for his birthday, because he never had the possibility to fly so far. To get up early, to sit on an airplane for the first time with 10 years as well as to be in Italy, Milano was not only exciting but also exhausting – actually for both of them. But the trip with Italian pizza, delicious ice cream and interesting buildings and museums will be an unforgettable experience for the mentee.

2 weeks ago we offered a get-together for our mentors. In a nice atmosphere we talked about how their mentorship is doing, what are recommendable things to do with mentees in Berlin or which books are recommendable and how often they meet. In summer holidays, most of the mentees are visiting their (or their parents’) home country and families for example in Poland, Lebanon, Turkey or also grandparents somewhere in Germany.

Meanwhile our active mentorships, also the latest ones, are doing well, we have to look for new volunteers, who want to become a mentor! Recently there are on the one hand fewer requests for becoming a mentor and on the other hand we have a lot of new mentees who would be happy to have a mentor. So, we had to spread our flyers in nearby cafés, shops, libraries and other institutions and hope to find new mentors!

We are really happy that one of our mentors wrote an article about her mentorship which is published in a magazine for our neighborhood. We hope to find new volunteers and match new tandems in autumn and wintertime.

Besides that, we are also planning another workshop in the circus, which was such a highlight for our mentees last year, that we really want to make it possible for the kids and the new mentees as well.

We say THANK YOU and send summer greetings from Berlin-Wedding.