Description of organisation

Our education and meeting youth centre "polaris" defines itself as a part of a local educational community and pursues a successful growing up process of the children.
We define ourselves as a meeting place, where young people from different social backgrounds interact with each other and exchange experiences freely and in a structured and supervised way. In this effect, the political and cultural education is our main objective. Related to our structure, another goal of our organisation is the implementation of children and youth activities as an integral part of the all-day school system in Jena-Nord: We want to promote the development of children and teenagers by giving them possibilities to expand their experiences, reflection abilities and freedom of action. Polaris wants to give them a place to improve their chances, wants to create equal chances, independent of gender, social environment, social background and ethnicity. Our multisided programme/offer of activities addresses all young people aged 10 to 27 years from the commuting area of Jena-Nord. Most of our visitors are aged 10 to 14 with and without special educational needs from various different social and language backgrounds.
Our regular activities are the public youth work: Young people in "polaris" play games, cook, collect experiences with media, make music, interact with people from different countries in intercultural settings, work creatively, meet friends or spend time in our garden.
In school holiday we offer project and workshops in various areas, for example: media, art, sport, games, international youth exchanges or trans-cultural events. During school time we are cooperating with school social work in different subjects and topics.