A contribution from the school

A research project in cooperation with the Institute for Developmental Psychology at the University of Osnabrück and the Verein Niedersächsischer Bildungsinitiativen e.V. (VNB).

Online talk, exhibition, waffle sale for a good cause and much more – Juna and Shahed give insights into the work of the focus group.

On 24.01.22 the research project Together for Tolerance came to our school and conducted the first survey in the classes.

After the first survey, 16 students were invited to participate in the Together for Tolerance focus group. We students met for the first time on 02.05.22 with the facilitators Juliane and Sandrine from VNB.

At the beginning we got to know each other, played games and talked about certain topics like racism, discrimination and bullying. We thought about how we can treat each other respectfully at our school and how we can put ourselves in others‘ shoes. In the next sessions, we collected ideas on how we can and want to improve the togetherness in the school community. Many things came together. Afterwards, we thought about solutions to the problems and did exercises again in between, such as one on changing perspectives called musical chairs.

We often worked in small groups, mostly mixed but also by year. The ten meetings took place during class time. In the last meetings, we thought about how we could put the ideas into practice and we decided on a tolerance week in which a different topic would be dealt with each day. In addition, we organised a new workshop to help the fifth graders settle in better and to be there for the younger ones if they have questions, and which also trains the participants to become dispute mediators. We also organised an exhibition on the topic of experiences of discrimination in our forum and arranged for an online conversation with two adults who talked about their experiences as pupils with racism and discrimination and how they dealt with it. Class by class, almost the whole school participated via video conference. Many classes collected questions that were answered by the two guests. The two were very nice and were able to explain everything to us calmly and understandably. They encouraged us to react to discriminatory situations.

During the Week of Tolerance, waffles were also sold for a good cause on 5 July 2022. The proceeds amounted to 152 €.

We had a lot of fun during the whole time and worked well together. The facilitators were very nice and funny.

The focus group agreed that the money raised from the waffle sale amounting to € 152 should be donated to the inpatient youth welfare service of the children’s and young people’s home at Schölerberg run by Ev. Jugendhilfe Osnabrück gGmbH. The handover is planned for January 2023.

Almost half a year later, on 28th November, the focus group met again. At the beginning of the meeting, each person was able to choose a photo that particularly reminded him/her of Together for Tolerance. In a second phase, we wrote down on different coloured pieces of paper what our highlights with the focus group were, what we liked and what we didn’t like so much. The slips of paper were then stuck on a poster. We also decided as a group to continue to do good deeds for the school community and do charitable fundraising. We hope to make small, positive changes in our school with our ideas and are now meeting on our own.

Juna & Shahed