Half a year at Visioneers

Since mid-April this year, I was allowed to be a part of the Visioneers team for 22 weeks as part of my internship semester, gaining a lot of valuable experience in the process. But first a short introduction to me, I'm Judith, 22 years old and I study social work in Regensburg, I left the tranquil Bavaria for half a year to go to the colorful Berlin for my internship semester and - let me say this much - I definitely didn't regret trying out life in the big city.

Right at the beginning of my internship, I was able to get fully involved in the project "Mobile Jugend-Lern-Hilfe.Jetzt", where I spent every morning in a residential group for children between the ages of 6 and 14, helping them with homeschooling, and for a while I also spent two afternoons a week in a shelter for refugees and two afternoons in a youth residential community, where I was also allowed to help with learning German and homeschooling. So I got a good insight into different inpatient categories, which was super exciting and informative for me, since these also represent a field of work of social work. After a short time, the children and young people got used to me and I got used to them, so I looked forward to my work in the various facilities every day. When all the school things were done quickly, there was sometimes time to play something together or time to look at a child's new bicycle, which was proudly presented to me. Until the beginning of the summer vacations, I was relatively little in the office and quite a lot on the road, which allowed me to get to know Berlin better - which was of course a pretty cool side effect for me :)

The summer vacations also marked the start of the hot phase of preparations for the summer vacation school, during which I was also able to help organize a lot. I was particularly involved in the planning of the afternoon program, which had a lot to offer the young people, from volleyball to bouldering and museum visits. But also for the German lessons I was able to prepare a couple of grammar topics and thereby refresh my own knowledge in this area a bit. After extensive planning and preparation, the long-awaited day arrived: the start of the summer vacation school. Finally, despite Corona, it was possible for a larger group of young people to learn, exchange ideas and discover Berlin together live and in color. The two weeks flew by and it was so nice to see the progress the young people made in the German lessons and especially how they grew together as a group and what friendships developed. Of course, it was sad that the last day of the vacation school came so quickly and it was already time to say goodbye. But some of the young people still came to our office for advice or tutoring, so I still saw them from time to time.

Another area of my work that I enjoyed was these counseling sessions, where I was able to support young people in a wide variety of tasks. I accompanied the young people especially in the application process for internships or training, but also in the search for housing or in all matters with various authorities. The gratitude of the young people and the fact that they confided in me motivated me a lot and of course also the fact that we were able to celebrate one or two successes together. All this made my internship at Visioneers incredibly varied and instructive and I am super grateful that I was able to work with such a great team and get such a versatile insight into the work of a social association!