Pestalozzi Children's Village

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Pestalozzi Children's Village
Interreligious prayer house, built in 1967 by Ernst Gisel

The Pestalozzi Children's Foundation is an international children's aid organization. Since 1946, children and young people have been the focus of their activities. The children's village in Trogen , Appenzell Ausserrhoden , is a place of peace education, where children from Switzerland and abroad learn to deal with cultural and social differences. The foundation gives disadvantaged children access to good quality education in twelve countries around the world.

It is named after the Swiss educator and educator Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi . Pestalozzi campaigned for the renewal of the elementary school. The children's village was named after him for two reasons: Firstly, the “living room concept” was adopted by the children's village as Pestalozzi's educational concept. In addition, the 200th birthday of the famous reform pedagogue was celebrated in the founding year of the children's village.

concept

The children's village in Trogen in Appenzell is the heart of the foundation, from which all activities in Switzerland and abroad originate. In the children's village, Swiss school classes meet young people from Eastern Europe. The aim of the educational project weeks is to break down prejudices and to deal constructively with cultural, religious and idealistic differences.

In the village's own radio studio and across Switzerland in the radio bus, schoolchildren produce programs that are broadcast on the powerup radio.

In addition to the projects in the children's village, the foundation advocates access to high-quality education for children and young people. The foundation enables disadvantaged children and young people to attend school regularly in twelve countries around the world.

There are no children's villages in the twelve other countries in which the foundation operates. On site, we work with established local partner organizations. They receive technical and financial support in the implementation of educational projects.

The foundation stands up for the rights of children. The Pestalozzi Children's Foundation promotes awareness and enforcement of children's rights in Switzerland and abroad.

history

Pestalozzi Children's Village. Linocut by Otto Schmid , 1948

In view of the consequences of the Second World War and the misery of the war children and orphans, the writer Walter Robert Corti called for the establishment of a village for war children in the cultural magazine Du in August 1944 with the article "A village for the suffering children". The response was great and in 1945 the “Pestalozzi Children's Association” was founded. Soon a network of like-minded people formed around Walter Robert Corti. The Pestalozzi Children's Village received its ideal floor plan mainly from the meeting between Walter Robert Corti and Elisabeth Rotten . In addition to Corti and Rotten, the founding group also included Marie Meierhofer , who took care of the medical care and supervision of the "taking in of the children", while Hans Fischli was responsible for the architecture and construction plans and Edwin Arnet was the editor of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung in public relations operated. The municipality of Trogen made land available.

The response triggered by Walter Robert Corti's appeal for the construction of a children's village in 1944 changed his life suddenly and permanently. The children's village became his life's work, although it was supposed to be an intermediate step on the way to realizing another plan: Corti had dreamed of setting up an international scholarly settlement, an academy for ethical research. His dream flourished right through to the construction plans and ultimately failed due to the lack of financial resources.

The foundation stone for the construction of the first houses took place on April 28, 1946. Volunteers from different countries helped set up the houses. The first children who came to the children's village came from war zones in Europe: France , Poland , Austria , Hungary , Germany , Italy , Finland , Greece and England .

The Bern primary school teacher Arthur Bill ran the newly founded children's village as a householder and teacher together with his wife Berta Bill for 25 years (1947 to 1972). He formulated the two main goals of the children's village as follows:

  • It wants to offer the abandoned, needy child a home where it can find everything that is necessary for its harmonious development in a family-like security .
  • It wants to be a village in which children, adolescents and educators from different countries and cultures can find a neighborhood and to do something together, which overcomes everything that divides language, belief and origin, the common, the general human as a supporting Component of the small international community.

In each house there were children from the same country who were looked after by a house father and teacher from the country concerned and were taught their culture. Joint events or competitions were designed so that the individual groups were always composed of different nationalities.

From the beginning there was a close exchange of experiences and children as well as joint educational courses with the Centro educativo italo-svizzero (CEIS) founded by Margherita Zoebeli in Rimini on May 1, 1946 . One of their common concerns was to work against the marginalization of the weaker and for their full acceptance.

With 20 Tibetan refugee children, the first group of children from outside of Europe was accepted in 1960.

During the Greek military dictatorship 1967–1970, the Greek poet Nikiforos Vrettakos found refuge for several months in the Greek house Kypseli in the Pestalozzi Children's Village. There he wrote poems, told stories to the children and regularly took part in the “international” morning celebrations.

By 1970, 15 houses had been built to provide a home for children in need from all over the world. In 1982 the concept was expanded with the establishment of the international aid of the Pestalozzi Children's Foundation to provide local aid.

Two "international houses" were opened in 1987/1988 for children of Asian and African origin who already live in Switzerland. The project for second and third generation Tibetan children and young people in Switzerland began.

In 1992, children who came directly from abroad were last admitted to the children's village for permanent residence. 34 Bosnian children in care and eight carers from the war zone Bosnia-Herzegovina lived in the Pestalozzi Children's Village for around two years. 

From 1993 onwards, the children and young people no longer only attend the children's village school, but rather the schools in the surrounding communities whenever possible.

In memory of Nikiforos Vrettakos, the text and photo book Das Kinderdorf Pestalozzi in Trogen and its Greek poet with the cycle of sixteen poems that he had written in the children's village from 1967 to 1970 was published at the 50th anniversary celebration in 1996 .

The village's own radio studio with the children's and youth station, powerup-radio, and the Pestalozzi Children's Foundation has existed since 1999.

The intercultural exchange projects were introduced in 2002. Children from Switzerland and Eastern Europe meet in the one to two-week projects. You learn to deal with cultural and social differences.

In November 2003, 25 organizations founded the Network Children's Rights Switzerland with the aim of promoting the recognition and implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child . The “Pestalozzi Children's Foundation” acted as the coordination point until 2008.

In 2004 the Pestalozzi Children's Foundation opened new intercultural residential groups in the children's village for Swiss children and young people. The children's village school supplemented the offer of the public school by placing the focus on intercultural learning and imparting intercultural skills.

As the highlight of the “International Year of Sport and Physical Education 2005”, the Youth Camp Play for Peace took place in the Pestalozzi Children's Village . The sponsors of this two-week event in summer were the Foundation, the Directorate for Development and Cooperation and the Special Advisor to the UN Secretary-General for Sport in the Service of Development and Peace , Adolf Ogi .

The visitor center opened on April 28, 2006 - 60 years after the foundation stone was laid for the first residential building . On two floors it shows an exhibition about the history of the children's village and about today's life. In 2008 the visitor center received a certificate of the European Museum Prize for its public friendliness .

Since 2006, a course has enabled employees from foreign partner organizations, ministries of education and school authorities to complete one to two weeks of further training in the children's village. This improves the long-term impact of the development projects.

The mobile radio studio (radio bus) has been on the road all over Switzerland since 2006 and gives children a voice.

The school and housing facilities of the Pestalozzi Children's Village were closed at the end of July 2014 due to insufficient occupancy. It was ensured that a good connection solution could be found for all children and young people as well as for many employees of the integration programs.

On the occasion of the 70th anniversary, the Pestalozzi Children's Foundation opened a special exhibition in the children's village's visitor center on April 28, 2016. The exhibition areas “70 Years of Children's Village” and “Tanzania 360 °” offered a look back at history and an insight into current projects. The artists Roland Heini and Heinrich Andermatt designed a pavilion in the shape of a globe. Inside, the story of the children's village was told in large-format comic pictures.

As of May 2016, two residential buildings were rented to the canton of Appenzell Ausserrhoden to accommodate up to 30 unaccompanied minors who have fled to Switzerland. The association tipiti took care of the youth.

Educators and sponsors

International charisma

The children's village quickly became known internationally. In the first ten years it counted around 500,000 visitors. Prominent visitors included Konrad Lorenz , the 14th Dalai Lama , Auguste Piccard , Henri Guisan , Josephine Baker , Pablo Casals , Martin Buber , Queen Friederike and King Paul of Greece , Gustav Wyneken , Werner Bergengruen , Carl Jacob Burckhardt , Hermann Gmeiner .

The Pestalozzi Kinderdorf Wahlwies near Stockach was built on the same model in Germany in 1947 to create a new home for the countless war orphans and homeless children and young people.

This was also the initial intention in Austria, where the married couples Schubert, Maislinger and Walla founded the First Austrian Children's Village Association (today Pro Juventute Children's Village Association ) in Salzburg in 1947 and Hermann Gmeiner founded the SOS Children's Villages , which soon became globally active, in Tyrol in 1949 .

In 1957, Pestalozzi International Village , Sedlescombe , East Sussex , was founded in England .

Movie

literature

  • Walter Robert Corti: The way to the Pestalozzi Children's Village. Haupt Verlag, Bern 1955/2002, ISBN 978-3-258-06468-0 .
  • Argyris Sfountouris (pseudonym: Damianos Nikos): The Pestalozzi Children's Village in Trogen and its Greek poet. (with Arthur Bill). Verlag Haupt, Bern 1996.
  • Walter Robert Corti, Guido Schmidlin (Hrsg.): A village for the suffering children. The Pestalozzi Children's Village from 1949 to 1972 with Arthur Bill as village director. Verlag Haupt, Bern 2002, ISBN 3-258-06470-9 .
  • Arthur Bill: Helpers on the way. Stories of a country schoolmaster, children's village director and disaster relief worker. Stämpfli, Bern 2002, ISBN 3-7272-1323-X .
  • Ueli Habegger: The Pestalozzi Children's Village in Trogen. Swiss Art Guide , Series 107, No. 1061. Society for Swiss Art History, Bern 2020, ISBN 978-3-03797-661-6 .

Web links

Commons : Pestalozzi Children's Village  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Guido Schmidlin: Walter Robert Corti. The founder of the Pestalozzi Children's Village in Trogen. Speer Verlag, Zurich 1996, pp. 148–150, 211.
  2. ↑ Arthur Bill : Helpers on the way. Stories of a country schoolmaster, children's village director and disaster relief worker. Stämpfli, Bern 2002, ISBN 3-7272-1323-X , p. 69.
  3. ↑ Argyris grew up as a survivor of the Distomo massacre in the children's village and translated the poems into German

Coordinates: 47 ° 24 '11.9 "  N , 9 ° 27' 36"  E ; CH1903:  752565  /  252242