Ahoj and hello from ahoj.info! Our project was initiated by Tandem, the coordination centres for German-Czech youth exchange. As part of the European Solidarity Corps, we commit to young people from Germany and the Czech Republic for one year. We would like to promote friendship and mutual understanding, as well as the confluence of the two neighbouring countries. Our workplaces are in the Tandem offices in Regensburg and Pilsen.
"The volunteer year has opened up new opportunities for me. I was able to try out and experience so many new things – this has really boosted my self-confidence. My experiences are now useful in my career path. It was simply a super push ahead for my life!"
Monika Suchá, 2022
As volunteers, we have two main tasks: on the one hand, we organise events for young people from Germany and the Czech Republic. On the other hand, we would like to get in touch with young people via social networks and give them insights into their neighbouring country.
During the year abroad, we organise two multi-day meetings for young people and young adults. We can choose the topics for these two events ourselves from the focus topics set by Tandem. This is great, because there are no limits to our imagination here and we can exploit our creativity fully. We can really talk about what interests us.
Social networks are a part of our lives. We provide interesting posts for you every week on Instagram and Facebook. We write about events we have attended or about our trips and experiences in our neighbouring country. Every year, however, we also look for new topics that will bring you closer to your neighbouring country, for example, funny things about the language or recipes typical to that country to try out.
Our volunteer service lasts one year (September to August). During this time, we participate in team meetings and help colleagues prepare their projects and events. We contribute our own ideas and are, therefore, an indispensable part of the Tandem team.
If you are interested in our work and want to become a volunteer member of the team, be sure to contact us!
The youth conference took place from 16 to 18 June 2023 at Nečtiny Castle near Pilsen. The event was attended by 20 young people from Germany and the Czech Republic. The conference was led by our volunteers Kateřina Louženská and Tom Wiegels. They were supported both during preparations and on site by Veronika Rybová, Kateřina Břendová, Stefanie Schütz and Lucie Kučerova.
The aim of the event was to sensitise the participants to the topic of political participation and to introduce them to a range of possibilities for political participation outside of elections. To this end, they participated in an input session and two workshops from external speakers.
Ondřej Kruťa, who reported on his involvement in the Czech High School Union, was invited as a speaker on the first day. Two different workshops were offered on Sunday: the Tandem employee and democracy trainer Ulrike Fügl looked at a range of possibilities for democratic decision-making with the participants. The second workshop was led by Renata Klanová and Petr Lebeda from Participace 21, who presented participants with different ways to participate through online consultations.
Tandem employee Kateřina Břendová also took the opportunity to exchange views with participants on their perspectives on the new focus of Tandem from 2024 onwards.
The 20th anniversary of the ahoj.info project was also celebrated at the youth conference. During their presentation about the ahoj.info project, the two volunteers also spoke about its long history and encouraged participants to also get involved in the form of voluntary service. As a highlight of this presentation, the participants were served a birthday cake in an ahoj.info design.
The video seminar took place from March 15 to 17, 2024 at the Waldmünchen youth education center and was prepared and conducted by the ESC volunteers together with their colleagues from Tandem. The topic was “Our world of the future”. During thematic discussions and in small German-Czech groups, the participants shared their opinions and ideas about what our world could look like in the future. These ideas were then reproduced digitally in the form of short films. It was up to the participants themselves whether they aimed to portray a more optimistic or pessimistic vision of the future and which type of representation they chose.
The workshop topic was introduced on Friday through a couple of collages prepared by the two ESC volunteers. These depicted two different attitudes towards the future, namely how our world could look in the future if one took either an active or a passive attitude towards global issues such as the climate crisis or social challenges. After the presentation, participants made their own collages in small groups. Saturday morning began with a World Café: At six tables, the young people discussed variety of topics in small groups, such as the climate crisis, robots and artificial intelligence, the impact of social media on interpersonal relationships, and politics and political engagement. An introduction to technology by Markus Zwicknagel from the Waldmünchen youth education center was followed by small group work on the films. The film equipment was provided by the youth education center. The seminar weekend’s program also included language animations and games to get to know each other, which were conducted by language animator Karel Hájek.
The short films were presented on Sunday morning. A total of 24 participants produced five short films as a result. One film featured the advantages and disadvantages of using social media on smartphones. Another film depicted a future scenario in which robots were drinking coffee just like humans, which astonished the people around them so much that they did not know how to deal with it. Social challenges such as gender discrimination in the workplace were presented in another film. The event ended with a joint evaluation, in which the participants rated the video seminar very positively.
