Roost-Warendin, 9th November 2019. In the nicely illustrated report on her work placement Jana tells about her experiences at the Ecole Belleforière. Together with the other trainees she accompanied the primary school pupils during the lessons, played games with them, supervised them in a school trip, and taught them first German words and songs. The children especially enjoyed singing along the song “Je ne parle pas francais” by Namika. At the tearful end of her great work placement the children gave Jana a farewell letter and a lot of flowers. Jana writes, “The work placement was a very good and great experience and I am really glad that I have done it. During the week I could learn a lot and it was great fun, too. I can recommend doing a work placement there to everybody.”

La Coruna/Oberhausen, 8th November 2019. Since 2001 an outstanding project has existed at the Heinrich-Böll-Comprehensive School in Oberhausen: For 14 days up to 16 pupils can immerge into the working world of Spain and in the context of a work placement they can cooperate in a kindergarten, a day care for the elderly, a library, an office, or in a school. This remarkable project was initiated by the very dedicated Spanish teacher Jörg Mallmann, who tirelessly encourages the pupils to do work placements in Spain and time and again enjoys accompanying them to Galicia. So, this year from the 5^th to the 18^th October school was again exchanged against a work placement abroad. In the morning they worked, in the afternoon they went shopping in the city centre of La Coruna, or they ate tapas together. For the first time this great project was supported by the Elena Bless Foundation. In an afterwards meeting in Oberhausen the chairwoman of the foundation could have a look at beautiful photos of the stay in Spain and successful folders of the work placement, try tasty tapas and also get into a conversation with the very nice pupils, who enthusiastically reported on their work placement.

Brighton, 22^nd September 2019. During their work placement in a charity shop of the organization “British Heart Foundation”, which commits itself to studying heart diseases and their control, Ireen and Jason enjoyed working in a really nice team. While Ireen’s duties were “putting a price tag on clothes, DVDs etc., putting up and damping the clothes, cleaning up the shop, and washing up donated dishes”, Jason could “sort books and reduce the price of articles which had been in the shop for a long time”. Besides, he accepted donations, registered the names of the donators in a system, and could sometimes accompany the driver who collected the donations through the city. In their free time the two of them could not complain of boredom, either. So Ireen writes in her report  that one day she went to London with a class mate and suddenly found herself in the midst of a “Fridays for Future” demonstration. By bus and train she also explored the surrounding area of Brighton: “The landscape out of the town is breath-taking: milelong beach, cliffs, and many routes for walking. Simply a place for breathing deeply.” Jason tells in his report  that he met with the English driver in his free time to do something together with him, thus he got to know a lot of  people, and all in all could improve his language skills by the work placement.

Lubliniec, 2nd September 2019: By means of kinship ties Jacqueline succeeded in doing her work placement in a psychiatric hospital in Poland. During her three weeks stay in the Upper Silesian district town Lubliniec she could get to know all departments of the hospital. In the process she had conversations with a lot of people from the age of 4 to the age of 70, which often affected her very much. However, she mainly helped in the staff department and took care of the correct filing of important documents of the staff. Jacqueline concludes her vivid report (https://elena-bless-stiftung.de/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Lubliniec-2019-1.pdf) with the statement “The work placement was a great experience and I realized that thereby I became much more autonomous (…).”