Finding + supporting mentors for pupils in Berlin

First of all, PaSch wants to say happy New Year and wants to send you and your families best wishes for 2017!

But before we tell you about our first weeks in 2017, we want to keep you updated what happened in 2016 since our last report.

Like announced in that last report, we organized some Christmas activities, like our annual Christmas get together around a fire with hot punch for all our neighbors and visitors of our community center. Like every year, a choir was singing some Christmas songs and also a saxophonist played some songs on our courtyard, which was really nice and impressive. Later on, we continued inside with some concerts and enjoyed the nice evening all together. Some PaSch- mentors and mentees came as well at least for the first part of the evening, so we could start Christmas season together.

On December 18^th, PaSch invited all mentors and their mentees to a Kid’s theatre in Berlin as our Christmas activity and present. We watched a play about an elementary schoolkid, who lives with his single mom who is working hard to feed both of them but doesn’t have a lot of time for him. He is a little overweight boy and his mom calls him “Schnubbel” as a nickname and unfortunately a group of 3 kids heard that one day and call him Schnubbel as well and bully him a lot in school. He is really sad about it and very lonely with all his problems in School and at home. One day he decides to run away and ends up at a kiosk with a very helpful and nice owner who listens to him and understands his problems and shows him how music can help to talk about problems. In the end it is shown, that all of the kids have problems at home with their parents, either they are rich, a single mom or a huge family and have more in common than they thought. It was a very impressive play about mobbing, problems that school kids can be confronted with, what they feel and how important adults in their surroundings are who listen to them and encourage them to solve their problems. Our mentees were really thrilled by the play and one of the kids called his mom afterwards and I heard him say: “Mom, this was a really good play, I liked it a lot, and you should watch it, too!”. Also the mentors are somehow like the kiosk owner – they listen to the kids, encourage them and help them in difficult situations to be stronger in following situations.

After the play we decided to drive home with a bus instead of the metro, so the kids can see all the Christmas lights and decorations on some of Berlin’s sights like the Gedächtniskirche (memorial church) or the Siegessäule (Berlin Victory Column). They really enjoyed the bus tour as well and we had a really nice last activity in 2016.

In 2017 we started matching already and are in the process of matching. We will continue bringing together some of our new mentors with the mentees waiting, which is always a very exciting process for all of them. Next report we can tell you what they discovered and experienced already together. For our new mentors we are planning a get-together to exchange their experiences soon, so they can tell us about their mentorship. Also some more experienced mentors can give some advices or share experiences.

As a community center with different projects and offers, we always had and have a lot of volunteers over the years supporting our work, our neighbors and visitors. To honor them and to say thank you, all the projects working with volunteers, organize a Thank-You-Party for them with food and a surprise. So last Friday, we invited all the volunteers that work in the community center and had a nice evening with a cabaret about voluntary work, some soup and drinks and also a small activity. We made a picture from all of the volunteers and they were invited to put their picture and a symbol or a drawing of their voluntary activity on a canvas. It became a really nice artwork. We had a nice evening together and the volunteers enjoyed their evening.

We also want to say thank you for your donation and your support, so we are able to continue our work or to appreciate in a proper way all the hours that the mentors spend for their mentees! Thank you!