Germany: Glasses of Compassion
Human beings - not for sale
Glasses of compassion - Refugees within youth ministry
Young reformer: Rebecca Lühmann
Church: Evangelical Lutheran Church of Hanover
Implementation period: 03.06.2016 - 19.11.2016
How many people were involved? 10
How many people did you reach? 19
What did you aim at?
- We aimed at seeing young people from different cultures and backgrounds, learn how to approach one another and live together. Those members of the Evangelical Youth of Hanover that connected with refugees in their hometown experienced some insecurity, doubts and discomfort. We wanted to encourage them to continue this important work through giving them the opportunity to reflect on their experiences.
What did you achieve?
We could offer our participants new and helpful perspectives. In fact, these perspectives were jointly developed by the participants themselves during the workshop. We got an overall positive and thankful feedback.
What did you do?
In June 2016 during the summer camp of the Evangelical Youth of Hanover, we implemented two workshops lasting 90 minutes each. We discussed aspects like the prejudices we have or our sense of justice. (It was also meant as advertisement for the main workshop in november but that did not work out)
In November 2016 we implemented the main workshop and invited a referent. The referent was a specialist for theatre pedagogical methods used for "Theatre of the Oppressed". Reflection was done among the youth participants.
Interview with young reformers
- What is the ongoing reformation you want to see in your church?
I would like to see an understanding between the youth and the other church members from different ages. How can we change our church that more youth can participate and work in our church. Also, I want to see more confrontation with the challenging themes, problems of society, and that we may be more present in the public.
- What has been the reaction of the project among the youth?
The youth were very interested and positive at the youth synodical level, unfortunately many youth have different interests, so they did get the most engaged.
- How has been the participation of the youth in the reformation project?
The project had two workshops for a weekend with the support and participation of our local church youth workers and deacons. This was a one time event for our workshop in November 2016.
- What has been challenging about creating the project?
The participation of the youth has been challenging as many people did not engage as we expected. The communication in the leading team was challenging but the issues were overcome. The youth nowadays don’t have much time to join the initiatives. We also didn’t have much time for advertisement.
- Did everything go as planned?
Not everything went as we planned. We planned to have a reference to speak in the workshop, but they had to be cancelled and replaced by some other program. The plan went different as we expected but it went well.
- How do you see the continuity of the project?
Yes, the workshop could be repeated, if we advertise and get more people in touch with the program. If the local church is interested to continue this, it is possible.