Voluntary Work

The focus of our work is the psychosocial stabilization of children and adolescents affected by natural disasters and/or armed conflicts. For this work, we are looking for professionals in pedagogy and therapy. The trips usually last two weeks. Participation is on a pro bono basis, with all travel, board and lodging, and material costs covered. The aim is to stabilize children in a trauma-sensitive manner using pedagogical and therapeutic-related methods. Parent counselling, teacher training, and training of local teams are also focal points of our work.

We are looking for experts from the following fields for the teams:

• Pedagogy (preferably with a focus on early childhood-, experiential-, circus pedagogy, etc .)
• Art and music therapy
• Eurythmy
• Medicine
• Psychology

The following requirements must be met to participate in our emergency pedagogical trips:

• Completed training in one of the relevant fields
• At least two years of professional working experience
• Knowledge of trauma pedagogy
• Minimum age of 25 years
• English skills (depending on the deployment country, also Spanish, Arabic, French, Ukrainian of advantage)
• Physical and mental resilience
• Intercultural competence and teamwork skills
• Experience abroad, especially in the Global South, is an advantage
• Familiarity with Waldorf education and anthroposophy is desirable

After a successful application:

• We invite you to an introductory training. Contents include the basic principles of humanitarian aid, an introduction to psycho-traumatology, introduction to  the emergency pedagogy concept, as well as security-relevant aspects and the integration of public relations.
• You will be informed about all emergency pedagogical trips through  our volunteer pool. A suitable team for the trip is assembled based on these needs and responses. We cannot always guarantee you will be part of the team, but we will try to ensure that you can regularly participate.

Take care of yourself

For deployments in crisis areas, it is advisable to examine your own motivation. We ask you to go through the following questions for self-reflection:

• Why do I want to join the emergency pedagogical trips?
• What do I expect from it?

Deployments in crisis regions are physically and mentally challenging. We ask you to carefully consider the following questions regarding resilience and flexibility:

• Am I in good physical and psychological health?
• Can I tolerate a lack of privacy during the deployment?
• Can I live and work under the simplest hygienic conditions?
• Can I cope with extreme climates?
• Am I generally flexible?
• Can I handle stress and conflicts?
• How do I deal with my own helplessness?
• Is my family okay with the deployment?

Contact us

If you are interested, we look forward to receiving your application. Please send a resume and a cover letter as a PDF (one attachment) to notfallpaedagogik@freunde-waldorf.de. For any questions, Dominique Wiemann is available at 0049 (0)721 20111 144.