Organisation / Hub: https://bachelor-of-being.de
Contact Person: Dr. Imke-Marie Badur
Contact Email: kontakt@bachelor-of-being.de
Description
The Bachelor of Being (affectionately known as “BoB” for short) is a personal orientation period for young people aged 18 to 25, based on the Scandinavian model of “folkehøjskole” and further developed with an integral approach.
For five months, 25 young people plus their pedagogic team live as a community on an idyllic organic farm on a peninsula near Kassel, Germany to devote themselves to the essential questions of life. Practical experimentation, theoretical exploration and personal reflection form a unique mixture.
As a kind of “breathing space beside the educational highway”, the BoB combines the three goals:
– career and life orientation
– personality development and resilience fostering
– competence development aiming at a socio-ecological transformation
So basically, we are deep-diving into all of the IDGs for half a year, giving them the space and importance in a young person’s live they should be entitled to.
Learnings
One of the major learnings was not to overload our programs with all the tools, theories and exercises that we as a coaching team love. We try to give the program a good balance of structured periods and self-organised spaces, which is harder to maintain as it might seem.
Another challenge is the process of choosing the participant: of course, we would love to give every young person the chance to participate. At the same time, a lot of young people are challenged with severe mental health issues. As we are not a therapeutical project, we are in a process of learning where to draw a line when it comes to accepting participants with a challenging mental situation. On the one hand, we know that our self-experience based project is especially appealing for those who struggle, on the other hand we need enough energy and focus for the group as a whole.
The positive aspects and learnings are countless.
To name just a few:
We are convinced that a long-term program like this has way more potential and impact than just another weekend-seminar. The potential in community living and the challenges coming with it in daily life are highly beneficial of the participants’ growth. Also, we observe an impressive learning curve when it comes to communication, facilitation of safe spaces and responsibility for one’s own emotions and actions.
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Adults have great responsibility
to engage youth effectively in communities activities.
To promote constructive dialogue
among members of our communities for developing and enhance Inner Development Goals
and create a friendly environment
founded on love, unity, cooperation
and fraternity among all people for common prosperity