For 50 years, the working group for children of foreigners has been supporting young people from immigrant families in learning German.
Not only because of the war in the Ukraine, the working group is urgently looking for volunteers.
Gauting – the primary school teacher Dagmar Scholz was a woman from the very beginning: five decades ago she founded the working group for children of foreigners (AKAK) under the umbrella of the Evangelical Church, remembers the managing director Dr.
Christel Freund.
Since then, a total of 280 volunteers have supported 3,800 school children in learning German, sums up director Marijana Pinkert.
She now looks after her protégés in the light-flooded rooms of the Gauting primary school next to the town hall.
The working group was officially founded on March 4, 1972, says Pinkert.
At that time, the children of guest workers from Turkey, Greece and Yugoslavia in particular needed support.
The social worker Johanna Jonas was the full-time manager until 2018.
Erika Geipel was also there at the beginning: the now 92-year-old from Gautingen volunteered to look after war refugees, remembers Christel Freund.
Marijana Pinkert has headed the working group since autumn 2018.
Many volunteers have meanwhile dropped out for reasons of age or also due to corona, the teacher and Slavicist regrets.
"I know what it's like when you come to Germany as a child without any language skills," she says.
Born in Bosnia, she fled to an aunt in Stuttgart in the mid-1990s when she was eleven with her mother and two siblings after a year and a half of war.
"It's basically terrible when you come to a foreign country as a child without knowing the language," says Pinkert.
“I learned back then that learning a language is the best means of integration,” says the language teacher.
The pandemic has left many children completely behind.
"Some second graders, left to their own devices during the school closures, don't know how to hold a pen or can't read at all," says Pinkert.
“We are trying to make up for the deficits in individual care.” Pinkert is also urgently looking for more with the district office for the 35 newly arrived children from Ukraine who are housed in the care apartments of the BRK’s multi-generational campus in Gauting on Starnberger Straße honorary German teachers, preferably with knowledge of Russian.
Due to the pandemic, the birthday party "50 years of AKAK" for the association sponsored by the government, the VR Citizens' Foundation, the district and the municipality on March 4th fell through.
But "we hope that we can catch up on the anniversary this fall," says Christel Freund.
"We invite everyone who has been involved in the integration of children of foreigners over half a century to do so." Anyone who has the capacity and can support children in learning German should contact the "working group for children of foreigners", Schulstraße 4, in Gauting, e-mail: akak -gauting@gmx.de, (089) 89 08 30 64 63.
