Healing the unemployed youth.

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For the past four years, our church has set a specific task for the office for youth work, to work with
the youth on unemployment through churches and schools. The scope of duties include development
and promotion of concepts for an Evangelical youth work with an orientation to life and profession
and the initiation and running of projects to meet these needs.
One of the most important matters in this context is the pedagogical and practical accompaniment of
male and female volunteers and full-time workers in the Evangelical Youth. Most of the energy goes
in conducting training workshops with cooperation from seminary and most importantly, through
community actions. Our aim is to be lively and creative, so that many young people will take part in
what we offer.
The worst affected by employment, reduction of staff or displacement of employment are the women
who have dropped out of school without completing their studies. They are very worried about their
job market and of their own identity. Boys are especially affected by fears concerning an uncertain
future.
In the background of growing request for education and the existing high level of unemployment
among young women and girls, a concept is necessary, which improves their chances for
professional and thereby also for social integration. It is necessary to recognize the strong and weak
points of the unemployed and then to support them in their qualification and to enlarge their
competencies. The chances for professional integration can only be promoted when we will be
successful to find enterprises that offer apprenticeships for girls and young women.
Equal opportunities and reducing prejudices in the sex-specific work with girls, is one of the most
important aims of our work. Our educational plans offer courses on planning for one's life, especially
for girls and young women who are disadvantaged in learning or with low grades. We offer basic
experience with the following specifics: Communication, social safety, education and the
confirmation to find perspectives for a successful and good life. Therefore we not only offer
professional help and work possibilities, but also love, partnership and relationship, spare time
activities, awareness on politics and society, family and children. Therefore it is also important to
provide ourselves with enough space for vital energy, strong enough to cope with the challenges
that we face. We try to be very practical and according to our finances, fairly economical.

We, as Evangelical Youth, do invite all male and female pupils of the final classes and their teachers
to join us in our motto: Co-operation on trade and industry, school and church/partnership for
apprenticeships. More than 4'000 young people took part in our educational activity in Goslar,
Wolfenbuttel, Helmstedt, Seesen, Bad Ganders helm since March 1999 and also for the third time
now in Blankenburg/Wernigerode. We look for eccentric places, for example, the main workshop,
forge and garage of the former mine directly in front of the Rammelsberg, the church campus or the
medieval St. Georgenhof so that we are free to do what we want which is so important for our youth
work. Not only trade and industry give a positive resonance to these events but volunteers also show
an incredible thirst for activity, giving their best effort.
We meet in open rural areas meet with district and municipal governments, ministries, local
government authorities and we get special licenses for places for example, the place in front of the
town-hall in Helmstedt. We are being supported by our provosts and church congregations, our data
processing department and the audio-visuals center.
Young people who usually are not interested in church, get in touch with us directly. We do have
various and productive contacts. These youth activity-days are a good possibility to show the
contents of our work in such a way that it gives us the needed publicity. We are very happy that the
people in our church districts also show their interest and want to join our work in the partnership
for apprenticeships. Those people who joined us say: "It is wonderful that the church arranges
something like that, which shows that they have put their heart and soul in this matter!
I am often asked: "How can this work be fulfilled through the Gospel?" We are all asked to develop
ourselves and to live a positive life. Christian belief calls for relation and participation. We are more
than we ourselves think, experience, feel or believe. And that is not only because we are single
persons, only responsible for ourselves, but also because there is something in our personality that
shows us that we are responsible for other people too. The godlike personality that shows our
responsibility for other people, that which consoles, strengthens and unburdens us personally.
There is no sentence more often to be read in the bible than the ones:
"Don't be afraid!"
"God is always with you".
"Don't be afraid!"--that is a word, young people need at the moment. And this in combined with
concrete offers. Our church stands in front of a world that wants to know how to cope with crisis in
fields like economy, personal identity, ecology, guilt, and hope for the future ... Any Christian has to
be open for what happens in this world. We are part of a cultural context and should know this
context in detail. We have to understand the time we are living in and also the language of our
young people and we have to use their language too.
It is a challenge for us working in our church to give an answer to the true and legitimate question
of young people "Where do I go?" and these young people have the right to get an answer! Through
working with the unemployed young people, we see a chance to get very closely relating to young
people. This gives us the opportunity to experience what and how they witness, think, feel and
believe, but it also helps young people to be reintegrated to their daily lives and to their social
responsibility.
SABINE RICHTER

Evangelical Lutheran Church in Braunschweig, Germany

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