Serve the City Freiburg

The “Serve the City” Freiburg community is the reason I began calling Germany home, and it pushed me to be more internationally-minded and compassionate.

To embrace the idea of “crossing the divide” between different social groups, I started a branch of Serve the City, an NGO which aids refugees and homeless people, in Freiburg. By organizing events that gather people from different social groups to work together, I hope to enhance mutual understanding between groups, as I believe this is the best way to battle stereotypes.

In one of the volunteering events, we invited locals and refugees to prepare a meal together. When we offered an Afghan refugee girl to take more ingredients, instead of settling on being ‘the helped’ and leaving, she invited the team to an Afghan cooking event and regularly joined our volunteering activities. When she took leadership to help plan the events, she was crossing the line between “the helpers” and “the helped”, an example of my mission being realized.

My little initiative and faith in the ideology of “crossing the divide” made differences for people in the STC Freiburg community, and it became clear to me that people might be very willing for a change. I feel driven to further spread this mindset of understanding and integrating those negatively depicted by society.