PC(USA) and Berliner Missionswerk offer volunteer service placement in Berlin

Applications for the new opportunity are due June 10

by Kathy Melvin | Presbyterian News Service

Ryan and Alethia White are mission co-workers serving in Berlin. (Photo by Kathy Melvin)

LOUISVILLE — Global partner Berliner Missionswerk, in partnership with the PC(USA), is offering two unique opportunities to participate in service positions in the Evangelical Church Berlin-Brandenburg-schlesische Oberlausitz beginning in September.

This service opportunity is open to adults 19–30 years of age. The application deadline is June 10. The volunteers will be part of a small group of international volunteers, and their service will be accompanied by a seminar program.

One volunteer service position with Berliner Missionswerk is located in Spandau, in the northwestern part of Berlin. The congregation is one of the largest in the city and offers a variety of volunteer opportunities due to its program diversity. The congregation has two kindergartens with day care and after-school care, a family center, homes for seniors and a One World Shop. In addition, there is youth work and a wide variety of encounter groups in which volunteers can participate.

The second placement is in Fürstenwalde, in the southeastern part of Berlin. The large diaconal institution supports people with and without disabilities in shaping their lives freely and with a sense of self-determination. People of all ages play, learn, live and work in the day care center, the special schools, the residential and work facilities and its own residential care home for the elderly. Here, too, volunteers have a wide range of opportunities in which to engage and walk alongside others in their individual development.

Participants are invited to spend 10 months living and engaged in volunteer service through the PC(USA)’s ecumenical partner in the capital of Germany, exploring what is means to be actively engaged in the world, developing a sense of living out faith in action, and learning more about self, community and what it means to be a faithful global citizen.

Volunteers are responsible for:
Visa costs to be determined (assistance may be provided).
Basic health insurance costs (valid within Germany and the EU): 38 euros per month.

The program is responsible for:
Housing.
Travel to and from Berlin and all volunteer service-related travel.
A seminar program.
An intensive language study course.
Pocket money.
A transit ticket within Berlin and the surrounding region.

Basic knowledge of the German language is a great advantage, but not necessarily required as the volunteer service begins with an intensive language course.

Berlin is the colorful and lively capital of Germany, and with 3.7 million inhabitants, it is the largest city in the region. Berlin has often been the scene of important events in world history — industrialization, revolution, National Socialism, German division and reunification. Traces of history are still visible in countless places around the city, but today it is also a center of creativity, a city of contradictions and tensions, and a place where people of different languages, religions and nationalities live together.

Applications should be sent to mission co-worker Alethia White at alethia.white@pcusa.org.