Social and Employment
Place
Münster, Germany
Sponsor
Doris Reich
Grant(s)
4 000 € to the Selection Committee at 2008/05/27
Project leader
VIP
"The youths with whom VIP works are often the victims of family upheavals and are extremely fragile. It is very important to help them recognise their personality, their strengths and their weaknesses. The accrobranche garden is one tool that can address their needs in very concrete terms."
Doris Reich
In Münster, in Lower Saxony, the association Verein sozial-integrativer Projekte (VIP) has been conducting projects since 1981 for youths on the sidelines or who have fallen into delinquency. By welcoming them in hostels, by offering them educational activities and social assistance, it accompanies them for the time they need to find their place in society. The association follows up an average of 200 to 250 children and adolescents.
Learning to worry about others
In order to help them surmount the violence that is often their lot and to guide them towards a the taste for group effort, it frequently renews the activities that it offers them. Recently, during an excursion, it realised the extremely positive impact of climbing. This difficult sport demands reflection, endurance, as well as solid team spirit: on the rope, it is in fact crucial for every person to make the right gestures and to think about those who are in front and also those who are behind.
VIP therefore plans to buy a mobile garden system offering accrobranche elements: the main skills learned during a climb will be exploited here along trees, monkeybridges and rope bridges. This will help the youths to come and regularly face genuine nonviolent challenges, under supervision. Besides, the association can take advantage of the attractiveness of this new sports workshop to intensify its work on prevention in cooperation with a number of schools of the city.