... Only with young people!

Yesterday evening I went to hear a lecture by Paul Nolte, a German professor (with a background in history and sociology) and leading intellectual. Some time ago (well, it must actually be a year or two ago already), I found one of his books and read it with great interest. The book was called “Generation Reform” and provided a couple of – in my opinion - very good thoughts and ideas about the future of the German state. Because the book was so inspiring to me, I really wanted to go and hear him speak.

His lecture was called “The price of chances - About the economy of a new citizen society” and was organized by the Körberstiftung as part of their “Körberforum”, which is subtitled “For people, who don’t want to leave everything as it is” :) His lecture was basically divided into four parts. In the first part, he outlined the different values and guiding principles of the citizen society over the last three decades and especially how they changed after the fall of the Berlin Wall (basically in the 80ies, citizen society (or civil society as you might also call it) existed as a form of self-organization against the power of the state, whereas in the early 90ies the state wasn’t seen as enemy anymore; citizen engagement started to be was seen as “activities of individuals in social networks”).

The second part focused on the relation between the citizens and the state. For Germany, Paul Nolte identified four important “crisis”, which have a huge influence on our society:

1. The crisis of the consumer society (consummation past its peek at the end of the 80ies and is since declining)


2. The crisis of the tax state (people are less willing to pay more and more taxes but at the same time are less aware of the rising costs of public services)


3. The crisis of the welfare state (growing state debt since the 70ies and a growing feeling of people to give more than to receive)


4. The crisis of the public sphere (people are retreating into privacy and democracy is not res publica anymore, but rather seen as a political system that should ensure as much freedom of privacy as possible).

In the third part of his lecture, Paul Nolte presented his idea of the new “innovative citizen society”. Instead of being just mere consumers of resources and having a lot of expectations to gain from the state and others, people should invest more into society again and also show more solidarity. Everyone should ask themselves: “What can I do as an individual to serve the society I live in?” The whole concept is based on a sustainable and more long-term approach: innovations that are made today will bring benefits tomorrow – this is something that people seem to have forgotten. One good example is that in Germany, parents are not willing anymore to invest in the education of their children if that means that they have to cut down their own standard of living (not to mention that investing in education is generally “out” so to say – something that I know from my own experience with my mum).

Lastly, in the fourth part, Paul Nolte described how the state could address some of the problems highlighted in the second part.

While the lecture was generally good, the discussion with questions from the audience that followed it was much more eye-opening to me (probably also because I had already read about many of his ideas in his book). There were quite a number of people who spoke up and they were generally quite critical of his vision. A number of people even compared his visionary idea of more socially active citizens with the vision of communists who claimed that for socialism to work, a “new human” is needed. But in general (making the comparison with communism or not), people argued that his vision is unachievable. You could hear comments like: “”People are not interested in the society anymore, they just care about themselves and you can’t change that” or “the majority of people wants to be led and for those who lead, we have our politicians” - which is a comment that totally ignores individual leadership and is in my opinion exactly what Germany is lacking!

Over the last years, it has become more and more embarrassing to talk about one owns individual engagement. Doing social work is not really something that is openly valued and appreciated – people are not grateful to others to do this kind of work (and this is exactly one of the things that Paul Nolte mentioned in his speech as well) and instead of those of us who are active telling others that they should do the same and show more solidarity with their fellows, we are hiding ourselves and our activities when talking with other people about them (in my case, I know that telling many people at university about the things I do, I would just hear from them things like “why don’t you go out and party more?”). In addition, I strongly believe that we need more leadership in all spheres of live. This is an area where we can learn a lot from America – promoting leadership skills, valuing them and awarding leaders for the benefits they bring to our society. All this is non-existent in Germany.

I actually very much liked one of the responses that Paul Nolte gave to a statement that we can’t change a thing anyway. He said: “Only because a disease is hard to combat, doesn’t mean that we don’t try curing it”. But adults are so … disillusioned, vision-less, exhausted from life or as Kumi Naidoo’s son apparently once phrased it “contaminated with experience”. Renée, the Coordinator of the Millennium Campaign in Germany, who spoke at the event of the European Youth Forum, which I attended this weekend, said in response to the question, why she chose to focus in her Campaign on young people: “If I speak to adults about the MDGs, they might agree that they are very important, but they are very skeptical if they can actually be achieved. If I speak to young people about the MDGs, they say: Ok, let’s do it and make them become a reality!” It was exactly these words that I had to remember yesterday evening when I heard all these old people speak. And maybe the reference to communism isn’t something that we should just laugh about. Maybe there lies a deeper truth in it. If you look at people in Germany who “don’t want to leave everything as it is”, then you’ll find out that (still) a majority of them are “Alt-68er” (those who were part of the big student demonstrations in 1968). Many of them were communists, but after the fall of the Berlin wall, all that they believed in over many, many years suddenly fell apart. They had to realize that their vision was unrealistic – and they became disillusioned by that.

But if the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of communism disillusioned so many – then this is yet another reason for me to turn the power to young people, whose minds are still “uncontaminated” and who still believe that, if you just work hard enough, then it is possible to make a vision come true! Giving up before the work has even started is a virus that unfortunately, too many people have already been infected of.

Stuck in the middle of nowhere.
This place is not my place anymore.
Rain is covering the soil I’m walking on,
Like tears sympathizing with me.

I’m longing to be embraced again
By this city;
As much as I’m longing to be kissed
By the person I love.

Loneliness is creeping into my soul.
The night is my only friend.
Darkness is surrounding me,
Like a warm shell covering my skin.

I’m longing to be embraced again
By this city:
As much as I’m longing to be kissed
By the person I love.

At night, this place has its right to sleep.
At day, I’m tired of its pace.
Slow and constant are its moves,
But no change will ever be borne here.

I’m longing to be embraced again
By this city;
As much as I’m longing to be kissed
By the person I love.

I need to leave and I know where to go.
Darkness is light, and light is darkness.
The city that never sleeps,
Is my place to be.

New York,
I’m longing to be embraced by you.
How long still do I have to wait to make you mine?
How long still before I can sleep again?


[It must be at least 8-9 years since I last wrote a poem or any piece of lyric.... Kudos to Coldplay for the inspiration while writing and for the first line that I allowed myself to copy.]

Usually a year ends with reflections. But for me, it seems as if I postponed this moment of the year to the beginning of the new one. Over the last days, I’ve started reflecting about a lot of things (and I say I started as I have the feeling that this phase will still last some time). I’ve reflected about personal things - such as myself, what I want to achieve in 2006, about love and friendship - but also about “external” things, such as “the world in general”, TakingITGlobal, youth participation and youth structures in Germany…

This weekend I attended a seminar organized by the Servicestelle Jugendbeteiligung to give input to the NAP-Report, a paper, which provides the German government with feedback to the German National Action Plan for a World suitable for Children (Nationaler Aktionsplan für ein kindergerechtes Deutschland 2005 – 2010). We were about 20 selected young people from all over Germany, divided in three groups to give input to the chapters “youth participation”, “living standard” and “international responsibilities” (another seminar will deal with the other three topics of the NAP next weekend, these are “equal opportunities through education”, “growing up without violence” and “promoting a healthy life and environment”). Due to my background in international youth work and especially my knowledge about the MDGs, I was invited to participate in the third group about international responsibilities. We were a great team of young people between 16 and 24 and I’m generally very satisfied with the recommendations we came up with. One thing I’m especially happy about is that the group decided to recommend our government to support and promote the MDG and Youth Report. But even though I enjoyed the policy work, the weekend made me realize again that I’m slowly getting old and soon won’t be “youth” anymore. I also felt strange at some times given the vast experience I was able to gain over the past years and I strongly believe that I shouldn’t participate in such meetings anymore, rather should I support younger people to get involved (for a similar experience check my blog about the World Youth Congress 2005). I also realized that I’m getting old when I returned home yesterday evening: Two nights with barely five hours of sleep, alcohol in the evenings and full working days – I seriously can’t do this anymore… ;- )



Beyond these personal reflections, there are, however, also a few things that are more general and which I would like to share here:

First of all, I must say that I’m positively surprised by the fact that the German government initiated (and funded) this process, which gave young people the opportunity to give feedback to the report and provide concrete recommendations of how to expand or concretize it (the recommendations we developed this weekend will be handed over to our Minister of Youth in March and will then be discussed within the government). Looking back at the past 3-4 years, this has almost become a standard procedure in Germany, but more generally in Europe I think. For example, in 2002 I attended a German youth conference (organized by the same Ministry) to give input to the European Commission’s White Paper on Youth. Also, at the end of 2004, young people from all over Europe were invited to give input to the European Youth Pact. More and more, giving young people the chance to provide input to policies that are directly made for them, is becoming a standard procedure in Europe.
Given this fact, one of the recommendations we developed in our group this weekend, and which I strongly believe in, is that the German government should play a leading role in guiding developing countries in the same direction. Showing developing countries, how youth policy is made in Europe and providing them guidance in how they can work towards setting up similar procedures is something that Germany should see as a responsibility towards children and young people in other countries.



Beside the official seminar, I had the chance to discuss, brainstorm and plan with a few other TIG members and youth activists from Germany the future of TIG in Germany and “the good, bad and ugly” about German youth structures. It is amazing for me to meet people like Hodg or Marc, who are so full of enthusiasm for TIG and want to support us in getting TIG more widely known and used among young people in Germany. At the same time, though, there were quite a few people who had visited TIG before and were simply overwhelmed with the vast opportunities the site offers – so overwhelmed that they never came back. While I’m happy that we are meanwhile a small, but enthusiastic group, which is interested in translating TIG into German, I must say that there are limits to promoting TIG in Germany if this problem is not being dealt with.
While TIG is growing in other regions, Western Europe has a well-established culture of youth participation and it is much more difficult to convince young people here about the value of TIG. I also think that Western Europe is much more inward-looking than most developing countries. While European young people repeatedly say that they are interested in the world and care about the well-being of people in other countries, most youth organizations are still dealing with local or regional problems – and not so much with international ones. This is of course an opportunity as much as a problem for TIG.



It will be very interested for me to see into which direction German youth structures will be heading in the coming years. A growing resistance among newly set up youth organizations (but also government structures I imagine) in Germany towards the National Youth Council, which is not able to react in any way flexible, the growing need (at least in my view) to focus on international work and the growing interest of the Ministry of Youth to involve young people in policy making – all these challenges will have to change the existing youth structures in some way sooner or later. Let’s see when and how these changes will happen :- )

Over the last couple of weeks I spent quite a bit of time thinking about a possible topic for my master thesis, which I’ll have to start in spring next year. Attending the events around the 10-year review of the World Program of Action for Youth in New York played a crucial role in determining which area I wanted to concentrate on: youth employment. Whoever I spoke to in New York – people from UNFPA, ILO or the World Bank – everyone told me, that they want to support youth programs and activities, but that they are simply missing the data, which would show why it is so important and how it could be done. So I thought, why don’t I devote my master thesis to doing such research if nobody else is doing it? I really don’t want to spend (at least) 6 months of my life, researching and writing a 100-page paper that will end up on my professor’s desk – or even worse in his trash bin. Given my interests (youth, MDGs…) youth employment also seemed to be an excellent combination of my studies and personal interests.

For that reason, I got in touch with someone from the Youth Employment Network I met in New York and discussed the possibility of working on a topic (in the field of youth employment) that would be useful for the network – and eventually would help build the case for young people themselves. The response I got so far from YEN is very positive and after a conversation with a consultant for the ILO, who is currently doing a big study on barriers and incentives to youth entrepreneurship, I was full of enthusiasm to devote my thesis to the cultural aspect of this. My idea was to identify cultural barriers and incentives to youth entrepreneurship in a few selected countries.

I must admit that I hadn’t put much thought into the methodology or even the concrete theoretical framework of it when I had the chance to talk to my professor about this idea today. I would have been more prepared if I had been to one of her office hours, but as her 1-hour/week office hour (not uncommon for German professors, some even offer only 2 hours/month) is usually booked well in advance, I just had to take the chance that I was the only person today, who showed up to a research colloquium she is holding… So I presented her my rough idea, but she was not at all impressed by it.

In her opinion, what I was planning to do was a dissertation, not a master thesis. She told me that the only purpose of the master thesis is “to show that you are able to work scientifically”. She also recommended me, not to conduct any interviews or in any form whatsoever collect data myself. Instead, I should devote myself to studying a theoretical approach within sociology and keep this topic for a possible dissertation later on.

Of course I wasn’t at all happy about her response. Not even so much about her arguments why it wouldn’t work (I actually thought she was right), but more about her attitude and the way she treated me. I was completely devastated and de-motivated after talking to her. It was such a typical scenario for me and proofed all my prejudices I have towards German professors: They simply don’t care at all about their students. First of all, she didn’t seem willing to help me at all. All she said was negative: this isn’t good, that isn’t good. But she wasn’t giving me any advice. What I would want from my professor is that he is like a mentor for me, that he gives me advice and helps out where I’m stuck. I was hoping my professor would help me with literature or the methodology by saying things like: why don’t you read this article here, and to make it more tangible you could change your question in this or that way, and why don’t you consider this or that methodology etc. Instead I had to keep asking her for every little piece I wanted to know and even then her answers were very brief (e.g. I asked what cultural theories I should look at and she told me about one single article). It’s not that I expect her to give me answers to everything, but she could at least lead me into the right direction.

But moreover, she had not a single positive word for my idea and the fact that I wanted to do something useful with my master thesis instead of writing a paper that nobody is interested in. On the contrary, I even had the feeling that she didn’t want me to be so “ab-normal”. This fits very well with a comment I received from a good friend of mine just recently who also spent quite a bit of time abroad and wrote to me about German universities (I translate): What really annoys me about German universities is the fact, that its only about fulfilling norms. Uniqueness and individuality are not being recognized at all and even less so rewarded (and he adds that this is the reason why we feel so free abroad, even in countries such as China – where we both studied together).

It’s quite frustrating to know that you only have so little support from the people who are called your "educators”. But I’m glad to have friends and other people I can turn to and who help me out. In fact, I just had a long conversation with a good friend of mine, and without giving me answers, everything became so much clearer to me. It’s just simple things – like knowing how to go about a research paper like a thesis or how to find the right literature – but exactly this is what they are not teaching you at German universities. So sad.

P.S.: Talking about (cultural) barriers to youth entrepreneurship... no wonder with such wanted uniformity at German universities that entrepreneurship isn't very popular in this country.

Returning to a country that I once called home. Germany is a depressing place. People don’t have a smile on their face. They are full of frustration, full of bitterness and anger. Everyone is complaining; about our state, the government – be it the old one or the new one, which has not even started to govern yet. They complain about our bureaucracy, the fact that you have to pay 2,99 Euro when you call your local administration to get some basic info from them, about the unfriendliness of our civil servants. Everything is bad; everyone is evil. And the worst thing is: they are not even completely wrong. It is true that our state is in terrible conditions. Why can’t people be friendlier? Why did everything become so expensive since the introduction of the Euro? Why can’t shops and offices be open a little bit longer?

Germany is a country that is moving ahead in a snail's pace. It is the mentality of people. Everyone is unhappy with the current situation, but nobody has the guts to change anything. The federal election was the best example for this. Germans can only complain, but they don’t have any ideas how to change things for the better and even if they do, they wait for others to implement them. Germany is an un-dynamic place.

Meine Mutter sagt immer: Uns geht es allen noch nicht schlecht genug. Und Recht hat sie damit. Jeder meckert, dass alles so teuer ist. Aber ich laufe die Mönckebergstraße runter und muss mich durch Menschenmassen mit prallgefüllten Einkaufstaschen zwängen. Dabei schreibt der Economist sogar, dass es der deutschen Wirtschaft nur deshalb so schlecht geht, weil die Menschen nicht genug konsumieren. Wir müssen den Binnenmarkt ankurbeln, mehr ausgeben. Aber die Leute haben Angst und legen ihr Geld lieber zur Seite. Schon morgen könnte man arbeitslos sein. Eine reale Bedrohung? Ja. Aber wir sind doch selbst schuld daran. In keinem anderen Land erhält man so viel Arbeitslosengeld wie bei uns. Wir haben doch gar keinen so großen Anreiz mehr überhaupt noch zu arbeiten. Kein anderes Land hat so viele Feiertage wie Deutschland. Deutschland ist ein verwöhnter Ort.

Coming back to Germany after living abroad for two years is a challenging task. “Don’t let Germany bring you down” said a friend to me the other day, “I know how easy it does that.” But it was already too late. I felt like somebody had dropped me into a big black ocean of negative thoughts. I’m struggling to escape it and I know that I will. But it is a constant struggle, which is frustrating me. Everything in this country is a struggle. Nothing is easy. Germany is a complicated place.

I feel a world away. From where I was a week ago, from where I want to be, and from where I think my place in this world is. A few days in this country and I’m more aware than ever before that I won’t grow old here. I’m here only as long as I have to. Then I’m gone again.
I always had the endeavour to leave Germany and I always thought I just wanted to encounter new countries, new cultures, new languages. I wanted to learn how this world smells, how it feels and sounds. But before I eventually left, I met a guy who told me that people never just leave because they are reaching out to something new. They are always leaving because they also want to run away from something. And he told me that I as well am running away from something. And maybe it was this I was running away from. This black ocean of negative thoughts. All the sad faces. All this talk about “yes, we want to change” - without changing anything.

Ich habe mir ein Buch gekauft: Die Erde ist ein gewalttätiges Paradies von Ryszard Kapuscinski. In diesem Buch schreibt der große polnische Reiseschriftsteller folgendes:

„In den fünfziger und sechziger Jahren war Europa für mich ein starres Gefüge, das geteilt war in Ost und West. Da gab es die kommunistischen, von der Sowjetunion beherrschten Länder Osteuropas und die unabhängigen, entwickelten Länder Westeuropas. Für mich war klar, dass Europa sehr, sehr lange undynamisch sein würde. Ich wollte aber über dynamische, konfliktive Situationen schreiben. Europa war für mich schlicht zu langweilig. Ich war auch nicht fähig, über die Entwicklungen in Polen zu schrieben. Ich musste an Orte gehen, wo es große Auseinandersetzungen gab. Ich kam nur nach Polen zurück, um Bücher zu schreiben. Aber bereits bei der Ankunft dachte ich schon an die Abreise.
In der Dritten Welt hingegen fand ich meine Freiheit. So war ich allein in der Sahara oder im Dschungel von Afrika oder in den Bergen von Lateinamerika. Dort fühlte ich mich als freier Mann, ich war auf mich gestellt und konnte tun, was ich wollte.“

I was already thinking about my departure when I arrived. Of course there are things I like about Germany, about Europe in general. The city I live in is so much more beautiful than any North American city could ever be. Walking through my little hometown, seeing buildings that are several hundred years old, just gives me a feeling of peace. I appreciate the culture. Having a good breakfast with fresh-baked bread rolls and the morning newspaper is something I missed a lot. But at the same time while I’m sitting at my breakfast table I have to think about all the people in the world who are starving, who don’t have anything to eat, who can’t even read the morning newspaper because they never had the opportunity to go to school. Knowing about this, makes me feel a world away from where I should be. Germany is not the place where things are changing. But I want things to change and I want to be part of this change. That’s why I have to leave this country. As soon as possible.