Completed projects

Experiencing and shaping democracy together with vocational school students in the region

Project description

The Adam von Trott, Imshausen e.V. Foundation targeted young people and young adults at vocational schools in the Hersfeld-Rotenburg district and other vocational schools in the region for the first time with the "Yesterday as today - take a stand!" project. This is a highly diverse target group whose need for opportunities for participation, meeting places, cultural diversity and political education - especially in rural areas - is rarely met. Yet it is precisely vocational school students who - even after leaving school - remain in their region, in rural areas, and act as part of civil society. The Adam von Trott Foundation wanted to empower these young people, work preventively against right-wing extremism and thus also contribute to a committed civil society in the region.

The project team focused on instilling confidence in democracy and strengthening the culture of democratic debate as a direct response to right-wing rhetoric, because political action is above all communicative action. This was to be achieved through participatory, target group-oriented and socio-spatially located educational programs. Individual learning and awareness-raising processes were to be initiated among the participants in order to strengthen their personality, resilience and self-efficacy. To this end, learning modules were constructed together with the students in which democratic values could be felt and experienced. The project provided participants with the tools they needed for discussions and conflict resolution and enabled them to recognize anti-democratic attitudes, act courageously against them and stand up for democratic values and their fellow human beings - in other words, to take a stand in the spirit of Adam von Trott.

The innovation project "Yesterday as today - take a stand!" was implemented in cooperation with the Chair of Sociology of Rural Areas at the Georg August University in Göttingen. It was funded by the Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth as part of the federal program "Live Democracy!" and ran from March 2021 to February 2023.

Maurice Stiehl and his successor Paul Lachmann supervised the project on behalf of the foundation.

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