Description of organisation

The Kurt Löwenstein Education Center is a registered association and according to §75 KJHG (Children and Youth Welfare Act) recognized as a youth welfare organisation. We are organizing seminars of political and cultural education for children and young people (between 8 and 27 years) from Berlin and Brandenburg. We also offer multiplier trainings for those involved in youth (association) work for participants from all over Germany. Another main field of work of our educational institution are international encounters and educational seminars with partner organizations from mainly Europe and the Middle East, which take place both in our institution and in the respective countries of the partner organizations.

The aim of the educational work of the Kurt Löwenstein Education Center is to enable children and young people to analyze their own situation in a socio-political context and to relate it to their own interests. Through participatory settings, the participants learn to recognize, construct and publicly represent their own interests and needs. The main objective is to promote the strengthening of democratic acting and ideas as well as the empowerment of young people to actively participate in social processes and civil society activities in Europe. In doing so, it is particularly important to us to raise awareness of social exclusion mechanisms and to be able to act against structures that create racism, classism, sexism, etc. and to advocate a society in which diverse life plans and ways are self-evident.

Our educational facility has 120 beds and employs currently four educational officers, who are supported in educational work by a pool of freelance and voluntary teamers. Our institution is a member of the association of German education centers (https://www.adb.de/) and, as a federal education centre of the Socialist Youth - Die Falken (https://www.wir-falken.de/), is active in international networks such as the International Falcon Movement - Socialist Educational International (http://ifm-sei.org/) and the International Union of Socialist Youth (http://iusy.org/) or the Young European Socialists (https://youngsocialists.eu/). We are also a member and co-founder of the European education network EduNet-SDE (http://edunet-sde.org/). Our partners are organizations with different educational focuses that unite political and cultural education. Our memberships and partnerships enable us to continuously develop and ensure the quality of our educational work. As a member of Edunet-SDE, we work with our partner organizations to develop seminar concepts and formats for political youth education that meet the current needs of young people and young adults as well as social challenges. In addition to bi- and trilateral youth encounters, we regularly hold three to four multilateral face-to-face seminars with up to 120 participants and eight program days per year at our facility and are involved in the content of our partners' international educational and meeting activities.

Our youth education center offers with its premises, but also the spacious outdoor area, numerous opportunities to deal with political and social issues in a variety of ways in non-formal and informal formats with young people. Using modern media educational equipment such as iPads, microphones, editing computers, vlogs, explanatory films, podcasts, blogs or other, digital results can be produced. Ateliers, workshops and a wide variety of materials create classic artistic media and handicrafts. A theater prop and a natural stage are available for theater performances or the forum theater method. Biographical approaches such as business games and simulations as well as exercises from experiential education are part of the educational approach. We have a wide range of experiential educational materials and facilities, for example two low ropes courses, a team seesaw and a team wall. The aim of our voluntary service activities is to enable the participants to shape political education processes in international education and encounter projects. Under the guidance of the responsible education officer, the volunteers are enabled to design, implement and evaluate such educational events themselves. One focus is the diverse methodical design of political and intercultural learning processes. For shorter-term volunteer team activities, the focus is on the evaluation, conception and construction of above-described methods and materials for our educational work. The volunteers can then contribute this acquired knowledge and skills at our educational institution (honorary team etc.), but also in other organizations involved in international youth work, and ideally organize international political education processes independently. We are also a place for assignments for other voluntary services (German Voluntary Years in the social and/or Environmental Sector and “Federal Voluntary Services”).

Inclusion topics

This organisation is willing to involve volunteers who face situations which make their participation in activities more difficult, from the following categories for different types of project:

• Cultural differences
• Economic obstacles
• Geographical obstacles