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Overcome borders - Grenzen überwinden
Start date: Aug 1, 2016, End date: Oct 31, 2017 PROJECT  FINISHED 

We are a Catholic parish in the 15. district of Vienna. We regard our parish work as not limited through any culture, religion, party or nationality. Especially as believers we experience working with all people of good will as an enrichment.We have five employees and 90 other people of our parish help us in our work.We have been participating in EVS since 2001 and most of our experiences were good ones.This district is a problematic area. Due to the high percentage of foreigners (ca. 50 %) a lot of problems but also opportunities and challenges occur. As many parents go to work, many children and young people spend their leisure time in parks and in the streets.In the parish there are various groups for children and young people. Also a huge scout group belongs to the parish (at present 80 children and youngsters). This working with groups needs constant care: tasks, motivation, new impulses are important. Through the encounter with volunteers from different countries new aspects can enrich group life: interest in a different culture, history, language, mentality. On the other hand, the groups can be a place of learning for any young person, and especially for volunteers.In our parish there is the catholic kindergarten “Maria Salesia” which has explicitly the aim to provide children lots of social tasks, values and skills in order to develop a strong and healthy personality and so helping them to prevent them from a further childhood contamined with drugs and violence.Apart from this structured youth work our organisation is an important link in a system of open youth work in our area. There will always be young people who cannot be integrated into a stable group. Nevertheless, a young person needs acceptance, borders and love. He needs an accompanied peer group. In a period in which the authority of parents and school is accepted only with difficulty this group is a place of learning and experience for the young.The volunteers shall on the one hand support the periodical youth work; on the other hand they should be confident contact person for open youth work. In teams the will develope and offer need-orientated proposals.Moreover they can gain new learning experiences through their work in the parish kindergarten helping very competent pedagogues.Additionally our organisation takes part in the struggle against poverty and social exclusion, in the struggle for integration and cooperation of different cultures with a project LeO together with the Caritas of Vienna, where poor people can come once a week and buy for the symbolic prize food and can get social expert advice. This is also a useful learning field for our volunteers for several reasons.An extra benefit of our organisation is further, that Director Dean Fr. Martin Rupprecht has been for several years on the same time director of the Centre for Christian-Islamic Encounter of the Archdiocese of Vienna. So there is the possibility for volunteers to gain experiences in the intercultural and interreligious dialog.Finally we want to emphasize, that in the 15th district there live people from 121 nations together. Through this project the consciesness for Europe as a political ans sociological construction will increase.
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