Help for children and young people living in poverty

Question: What is the target group for the scholarship program?

Surendra: We talk about disadvantaged children and young people and intentionally leave the definition very hazy. Most of the children we support are living in poverty. But there are also special cases, which we look at individually. We don’t examine evidence of income or other official documents, because that can easily discourage young people from applying. However, during the interviews we conduct to get to know them, we target our questions and are very quickly able to work out their socio-economic situation.

Question: How does Aelius support socio-economically disadvantaged students?

Surendra: Our most important support mechanism continues to be the mentoring program. We support children from the age of 14. We start with an interview to get to know them. During this, we look very closely at their wishes, the challenges they face and the issues they are currently dealing with. This interest-based matching process then leads on to the mentoring activity. For this, they are assigned a mentor who is appropriate for their particular circumstances and interests. Since the organization was founded, we have been able to help more than 8,000 school students via our various support mechanisms.

Question: So you look for specific mentors who are right for the students who apply to you?

Surendra: Yes, that is why the length of the matching phase may vary. In the best case scenario, we will find the right person in our database of volunteers. However, there are also plenty of cases where we actively have to go looking for someone in the locality. That can then sometimes take a month longer, but it’s worth it in the long run. The mentors work with the children for several years until they have finished school. The minimum is two years, but our average period of support is currently between three and four years.

Question: How do you prepare the mentors to play this role? That’s quite a responsibility.

Surendra: Definitely. It starts with child protection, that is to say an aptitude test, criminal record check and so on. Then there is a basic training course that all the mentors have to pass and in which all the fundamentals are explained. When mentoring then starts, the mentors are able to choose the topics that currently concern them or their mentees from a modular range of training activities. And then there are coaching services given by external coaches, who provide support independently of Aelius.

Question: What role do voluntary helpers play for Aelius?

Surendra: It is the volunteers that make Aelius what it is. We were founded by volunteers who wanted the next generation to benefit from the same support that they themselves had received. That is why I said right at the start that one of our most important aims is to encourage the young people to engage with civil society. Now that we’ve been up and running for a few years, we have a large number of former mentees who work for us on a voluntary basis and are keeping this cycle going. That is the main reason why we have such a good relationship with our target group and find it very easy to reach out to young people living in poverty.

Question: Aelius Förderwerk has two branch offices and seven permanent employees. How is the organization financed?

Surendra: We are primarily funded by donations. These donations come from private individuals as well as from businesses or foundations that support us in specific projects or for a specific period. For example, the staff and program at our new office in Thuringia are financed by two foundations that like the fact that we are extending the opportunities we offer to Eastern Germany.

Question: What awards have been conferred on you and/or the youth mentoring organization?

Surendra: Actually, quite a few. We were awarded a nationwide award in the Start Social competition. The United Nations awarded us the Youth Peace Prize for Germany in 2020 and we have also been awarded the Bavarian Bürgerpreis (or Citizens’ Award). And I'll leave it at that.

Question: This year, you opened your second office, in Erfurt. Why in Thuringia exactly?

Surendra: As we have developed, we have noticed that although we are very active in metropolitan areas, we are reaching fewer school students in rural districts. And these are the very places where young people need more support because they are not part of a large network. We chose Thuringia because Eastern Germany, in particular, has a relatively high proportion of children growing up in poverty. And then there are also concerns about certain social and democratic developments, because we can see how marginalized social groups are played off against one another.

Question: Are you considering opening more offices?

Surendra: Yes. For us, Erfurt is something of a pilot project, a branch office that does not have to handle a vast program but is there to cater to just one German federal state. We will give ourselves a year to see how it works out and then take things from there. So far, everything is going very well.

Question: Is the current debate on migration having any repercussions for your work?

Surendra: Not directly, but it naturally has huge consequences for our target group. Most of the children we support have a migrant background. They grow up in poverty and know how poverty comes about. They find themselves caught in a difficult situation between the social debate about welfare benefits, hard work, etc., on the one hand, and the reality of their own lives, on the other.

Mr. Surendra, thank you very much for this interesting interview.

(This interview was conducted by Michael Wendenburg)