Franco-German youth agency

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Franco-German Youth Office
(DFJW)
logo
founding 1963 as part of the Elysée Treaty on the initiative of Charles de Gaulle and Konrad Adenauer back
Seat Paris, Berlin, Saarbrücken branch
people General Secretaries:
Tobias Bütow, Anne Tallineau
sales € 28.9 million (2019)
Employees 70
Website dfjw.org , ofaj.org

The Franco-German Youth Office (DFJW; French : Office franco-allemand pour la Jeunesse , OFAJ ) is an organization in the service of Franco-German cooperation and has the task of intensifying the relations between young people in Germany and France , mutual understanding to deepen and thereby bring them closer to the culture of the neighboring country.

history

DFJW in Berlin
Plaque in memory of the FGYO in Rhöndorf (2014)

German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer and French President Charles de Gaulle laid the foundation stone for the establishment of the Franco-German Youth Office (DFJW) with the signing of the Elysée Treaty on January 22nd, 1963. An intergovernmental agreement was then concluded on July 5th of the In the same year the founding of an "organization to promote relations between German and French youth" was agreed. Article 2 (1) of the founding agreement stipulates:

“The youth agency has the task of creating closer ties between the youth of the two countries and deepening their understanding for one another; To this end, it has to encourage, promote and, if necessary, carry out youth meetings and youth exchanges itself. "

On July 29, 1963, the offices of the FGYO in Rhöndorf near Bonn - Konrad Adenauer's place of residence at the time - opened, and on October 9, 1963, they moved into offices in Paris. The General Secretariat of the Franco-German Youth Office was based in Rhöndorf until December 2000 with 44 employees, at the second location in Paris with 26 employees at the time. Since then, Paris has been the headquarters of the FGYO. The German location of the FGYO is in Berlin . In 2014, the branch office in Saarbrücken was opened, which is mainly responsible for the organization of the Franco-German voluntary service.

In 2004 the youth organization was awarded the Carlo Schmid Foundation sponsorship award together with the German-Polish Youth Organization. On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Élysée Treaty , the services of the FGYO were recognized. The DFJW received the Adenauer-De Gaulle-Preis.

organization

The FGYO is an independent international organization headed by a board of directors. The chairmanship is held by the Federal Minister for Family, Seniors, Women and Youth , Franziska Giffey , and Jean-Michel Blanquer , French Minister of Education. The executive body of the Board of Directors is the General Secretariat, headed by a Franco-German tandem: Anne Tallineau, who will head the youth organization from 2020, and Tobias Bütow, who has been co-management since March 1, 2019. The 70 employees of the youth welfare office work in binational units at the Paris, the headquarters of the FGYO, Berlin and the Saarbrücken branch.

The Jugendwerk is a competence center for the governments of both countries and acts as an advisor and mediator between the various levels of government and the actors of civil society in Germany and France. The FGYO works with numerous partners in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity and supports them in financial, educational and linguistic issues relating to the exchange. It provides help in preparing and analyzing the content of encounters, as well as providing information and advice. In doing so, the FGYO continually takes up current topics that affect young people in both countries (integration, civic engagement, youth culture, the future of Europe and scientific and technical topics).

The aim is,

  • to deepen the relationships between children, adolescents and young adults and those responsible for youth work in both countries,
  • to convey the culture of the partner,
  • to promote intercultural learning,
  • support with professional qualification,
  • to strengthen joint projects for civic engagement,
  • to raise awareness of the special responsibility of Germany and France in Europe and
  • to arouse and deepen curiosity about the partner language.

numbers

Since 1963, the FGYO has enabled around 9 million young Germans and French to participate in around 360,000 exchange programs. The FGYO supports an average of around 8,400 encounters every year (around 5,200 group exchange programs and 3,200 individual exchange programs), in which around 195,000 young people took part in 2017.

The organization's budget increased by 10% in 2013. In addition, France and Germany have decided to increase the budget of this international organization for 2019 by € 4 million. It currently has a budget of 28.9 million euros, made up of equal contributions from the German and French governments. In addition, it received funds from special funds that were approved by the two foreign ministries in particular for exchanges with the Central and Eastern European countries and the Southeast European countries. In addition, funds from the European Social Fund are earmarked for programs in favor of young unemployed people.

Orientations

Building on the meeting of the Board of Directors (December 6, 2016), the organization will continue to commit itself in the coming years to initiating projects in the service of Europe and European citizenship that take into account socio-political developments in Germany and France, with the following priorities:

  • For more diversity among participants in FGYO programs
  • Promote participation of young people
  • Assisting young people in language acquisition and practice
  • Use the experience with intercultural educational work in the face of current challenges

The organization intends to convey key competencies for Europe and to underline its specificity as well as the added value of the FGYO.

working area

Vocational education

The current priority of young people in Germany and France is access to the labor market at the end of their university or professional training. Young people in vocational training, disadvantaged youth, students and young professionals are all faced with the same questions about their future careers.

Every year, 460 encounters bring together almost 10,000 young people per year: vocational schools, crafts, agriculture, vocational integration programs for young unemployed people, advanced training for young professionals from various fields, "work with partners", grants for young artists and multipliers in the field of cultural mediation and media, German- French voluntary service; Practices.

Student exchange

The organization aims to improve the mobility of students and young researchers in the Franco-German and international context. It works on the one hand with universities that organize exchange programs, on the other hand with students who carry out internships and research stays in the partner country on their own.

131 programs with 2,527 students: binational seminars and workshops, internships in companies, for Franco-German projects, for study visits to art and music colleges, etc. Plus 261 internships in higher education.

Student exchange

Group encounters take place either at the partner's location or at a third location. They are aimed at primary and secondary school students. The programs of the individual student exchange ( Voltaire program and Brigitte Sauzay program) form the second side of the school exchange and are based on the principle of mutual acceptance of a guest student in a family and in a school in the partner country.

2,344 school class encounters with 109,307 secondary and primary school students. 1,653 students in individual exchange; Teacher training in the field of exchange education.

Extracurricular youth encounters

864 programs with 23,566 participants were carried out by youth associations, town twinning committees, sports clubs and associations from the arts and culture. 111 young people receive a scholarship every year as part of an individual scholarship.

Learning the partner language

Exchange program, Reims 2013.

The promotion of the partner language plays a central role in the programs of the FGYO. These are usually aimed at young people between the ages of 3 and 30 and those responsible for youth exchanges. The organization awards grants for intensive language courses to young professionals and students as well as to leaders of Franco-German youth exchanges. It supports extracurricular language courses for young people and adults, especially in the context of town twinning, as well as language courses for children. In addition, the FGYO supports binational language courses in which German and French young people take part together. Through the tandem method, they support each other in learning the foreign language.

The organization has developed innovative methods for teaching the partner language within the framework of Franco-German youth exchanges and also provides these within the framework of further training measures for teachers and supervisors of exchange programs. These methods include speech animation, the tandem method and tele-tandem. In cooperation with its partner organizations, the FGYO trains group interpreters who are used in youth exchanges. More than 200 people take part in these training courses every year.

To support communication in youth encounters, the FGYO also publishes a series of bilingual or trilingual glossaries on specific topics (including football, integration and equal opportunities, cuisine, kindergarten and primary school). 1,638 young people and 4,838 children have taken part in language courses funded by the FGYO.

The pedagogy of intercultural learning

In order to guarantee the quality of Franco-German and tri-national youth encounters and to enable youth leaders and teachers to initiate intercultural and linguistic learning processes, the organization and its partners offer training and further education in the field of exchange education and language. This includes basic training, BAFA-JuLeiCa training, thematic training and further training.

Almost 2,000 teamers were trained in 2016. To this end, 124 training courses were carried out.

Tri-national programs

The organization has been authorized since 1976 to carry out 5 percent of its programs trilaterally with young people from countries of the European Community and since 1990 with all other countries; since 2004, up to 15 percent of the budget may be spent on tri-national encounters. There are several priority regions: the countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), Southeast Europe (SEE) and the countries of the Mediterranean region. In the MOE and SEE programs, the FGYO is supported by a special fund from the Federal Foreign Office and the Ministère des Affaires Etrangères et Européennes. Increased initiatives in the direction of the Mediterranean countries were taken; there are also occasional programs with countries such as Canada, South Korea, Mali, Mexico, Japan, Senegal or the USA.

In 2016, a total of 347 trinational programs took place in 45 countries with the support of the FGYO.

See also

literature

  • Hans Manfred Bock (Ed.): German-French encounter and European citizenship. Studies on the Franco-German Youth Office 1963–2003. Leske & Budrich, Opladen 2003.
  • Hans Manfred Bock , Corine Defrance , Gilbert Krebs, Ulrich Pfeil (eds.): Les jeunes dans les relations transnationales. L'Office franco-allemand pour la Jeunesse 1963-2008. PSN, Paris 2008.
  • Corine Defrance , Ulrich Pfeil : 50 Years of the German-French Youth Office / L'Office franco-allemand pour la jeunesse a 50 ans , ed. from the DFJW, Berlin, Paris 2013.
  • Adrian Gmelch: Youth Work in International Reconciliation Processes. The model character of the German-French and German-Polish youth organizations . Diplomica Verlag , Hamburg 2017.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. (addresses)
  2. The Elysée Treaty in the original text ( Memento of the original of February 8, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on the side of the Foreign Office @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.deutschland-frankreich.diplo.de
  3. Élysée Treaty / FGYO Agreement , German-French Youth Office
  4. https://www.aki-mobility.org/de/dfjw/ Presentation of the DFJW on AKI-Mobility
  5. ^ German Bundestag , 14th electoral term, 24th session, March 3, 1999 ( plenary minutes , p. 1859)
  6. "We will miss the view of the Drachenfels" , General-Anzeiger , December 17, 2000
  7. SR-Online ( Memento of the original from April 8, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Franco-German youth organization opens office in Saarbrücken  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.sr-online.de
  8. ^ [1] Adenauer de Gaulle Prize