Munich: giving children from needy families opportunities despite Corona – district of Munich

When the first lockdown was imminent, the people in the accommodation facility of the Arbeiterwohlfahrt (Awo) Munich in Obermenzing were afraid of everything. Fear that the police would stand guard outside the doors. Afraid that they would not get any food. “We encouraged them and told them: You will not be left alone,” says Hayam Halawa, who works there as an educator. And so it was, and not only that. Halawa and the entire team of educators helped the families with their children wherever they could. They supported them with homeschooling and were thus able to counteract educational deficits. When something more was possible again, they organized joint activities in the summer. It was balm for the children’s souls.

56 families with 55 school-age children from more than 18 countries – from Syria, Iraq and Portugal as well as from Somalia – currently live in the accommodation facility, for which the district associations of the Arbeiterwohlfahrt München-Stadt and München-Land have joined forces , Romania and Germany, as headed by Angela Pfister-Resch reports. Among them are recognized refugees and people who have lost their homes for various reasons, such as eviction. They were all admitted there as part of the public accommodation by the central homeless assistance of the Office for Housing and Migration. As a rule, three to four people share an approximately 28 square meter room with a kitchenette and bathroom.

In a worker’s welfare home in Munich-Obermenzing, homeless people from the district can also find a roof over their heads.

(Photo: Stephan Rumpf / Stephan Rumpf)

The lockdown was of course a particularly big challenge for the children, not only because their parents often couldn’t support them with homeschooling and learning due to a lack of German language skills. Because of the limited space, “nobody could withdraw,” as Pfister-Resch says. With a lot of commitment and pragmatic decisions, Halawa and her colleagues from educators and social pedagogues mastered the situation pretty well. They communicated directly with the children via WhatsApp from their work cell phones if their parents had given their consent. They downloaded learning apps for them and printed out assignments that the teachers had emailed.

A lot of support was needed, especially with the little ones: “We had 16 first graders who had only attended school for a few weeks and whose parents didn’t know what to do,” says Halawa. They also had older siblings help younger ones learn letters. “Every family has resources,” says the educator. For online lessons, some of the children were able to use tablets that had been purchased for a media project in 2019. In May and June, the children received devices via the job center.

The daily routines also changed: while parents were helped in the mornings with finding a daycare center or changing schools, and the schoolchildren were supported with their homework in the afternoons, the teachers now looked after the schoolchildren digitally in the mornings before their online lessons by reading with them on their mobile phones practiced. In the afternoons, they sometimes supported the students in a one-to-one setting with a mask and behind a Plexiglas pane. “We are the last network for the most vulnerable groups – we try to give them the best possible support,” says Pfister-Resch.

The enormous effort has obviously paid off. For example, Halawa and the educator team have heard from some teachers that the children performed better after the lockdown than before. She also tells of a 15-year-old from Somalia who actually had completed his compulsory schooling when he came to Germany, but who studied with her so diligently via WhatsApp that he made it possible for him to graduate from middle school. “It’s important because he wants to do an apprenticeship,” she says. Only in a few cases could she and her colleagues not achieve much, as with a third grader who has a reading deficit and whose parents did not want any support.

Creative ideas were needed

Since leisure activities were also not possible during the lockdown, the educational team was creative here too. It put together handicraft kits that it made available to the children, including a sample and a link where they could find the instructions. It got toys like children’s books and radio plays. As soon as something more was possible again, Halawa and her colleagues organized activities that enabled the children to socialize again. Even during their alternating lessons, they organized sports activities on the field in front of the house, football and rugby were and are popular with the children. In the summer, excursions by bus were on the program, for example to the fairy tale forest in Wolfratshausen and the Poing Wildlife Park. “They overran us,” says Halawa of the great demand from the children. Especially since only a limited number of people could ride due to the Corona rules. They would all have been hungry to come into contact with others again.

Halawa and her colleagues could see from the little things how good the support has done for the children. “I received a lot of pictures,” says the teacher. Also, some leaned on them while reading. “That’s recognition enough,” she says. The staff of the accommodation company is now prepared for possible renewed restrictions due to the corona pandemic. “The families are now also more familiar with computers and distance learning,” says the educator.

Pfister-Resch and her team would like a laptop for the common room that everyone can use so that young people can do even better research for a presentation or parents can find a daycare place on their own. For this they would like to use the donations from the Advent Calendar for Good Works of the SZ. Because that is their real concern: The children and the parents strengthen that they can get through life independently.

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