“I actually wanted to spend a year abroad after I’d finished school, but then Covid came along.” This was more or less how most FÖJ applicants began their interviews, many of which unfortunately had to be held online last year, remembers Dr. Martin Berg, Director of the Wiesengut Teaching and Research Unit for Organic Agriculture.
“The Agroecology and Organic Farming Group (AOL) had been considering the idea of offering a Voluntary Ecological Year for ages,” Berg continues. Despite facing an uphill battle due to the coronavirus, the idea nevertheless came to fruition in the first half of 2020 in partnership with the Landschaftsverband Rheinland (LVR) regional association and HR administrators at the University of Bonn.
“We’re both very happy to have the chance to be here,” says Lea Kamps. “The experiences we’re having are exactly what we’d imagined.” Her fellow volunteer Maximilian Weitkemper adds: “We’re outside every day, particularly during the growing season.”
Volunteering since August
They have been on their FÖJ placement since August, helping with the group’s various experiments and research activities. Their responsibilities are extremely diverse, ranging from helping to set up, look after and harvest scientific field tests to taking and processing soil, plant and animal samples as well as caring for valuable zoological collections. The two FÖJ volunteers also lend their active support to so-called landscape-scale conservation, which involves cutting back hedges and fruit trees, among other things. In addition, they help out in the experimental apiary and on insect monitoring and insect conservation projects. As well as gaining an initial insight into working life, the pair are also getting a comprehensive overview of a field of research that fulfills the FÖJ’s educational mission to the letter.
“As far as we’re concerned, UNESCO’s understanding of education for sustainable development is the primary aim, and not just of university teaching,” stresses AOL Director Prof. Dr. Thomas Döring. Finding yourself and tackling the questions of how you can influence the world at local and global level are issues that young people today are grappling with more urgently than ever before, he says. He believes that the FÖJ, as a year of education and orientation, can be an invaluable aid to answering these questions.
More FÖJ places created
Besides the two FÖJ placements at Wiesengut, the University of Bonn and the Institute of Animal Sciences have set up two more at the Frankenforst teaching and research unit. There are now over 300 volunteers engaged in conservation and environmental protection at 80 locations in the Rhineland as part of an effort that has been ongoing for 25 years. The central FÖJ unit at the LVR’s regional youth office helps young people make the transition from school to work and organizes educational seminars during their placement on issues such as water, energy and the climate as well as globalization and consumption. Above all, these address the question of what an environmentally sustainable and socially responsible world of tomorrow might look like in which there will be enough resources left for future generations too.
Maximilian Weitkemper is convinced: “I’d pick a Voluntary Ecological Year again any day.” Lea Kamps agrees: “I’d go for it again, even without any restrictions on foreign travel due to Covid.”
Anyone interested in a Voluntary Ecological Year at the University of Bonn can contact the teaching and research units at Wiesengut or Frankenforst.
