Inspiration, ideas and ways to get involved

The BMZ is a supreme federal authority and responsible for the development cooperation activities of the Federal Republic of Germany. In addition to technical and financial cooperation, the BMZ provides financial support for civil-society engagement in development issues, e.g. through weltwärts.

Engagement Global offers information and advice on engaging in development activities in Germany and around the world. The organisation provides funding for development projects and is also home to, for example, the weltwärts Coordination Unit.

The German Development Institute is one of the leading research institutes on questions concerning global development and international cooperation. It also runs a prestigious post-graduate programme for those seeking a direct track to a career in global development cooperation.

GIZ is a federal enterprise that operates globally, offering services in the field of international cooperation to promote sustainable development and international education work. GIZ’s main commissioning party is the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).

The Centre for Rural Development (SLE) is based at the Albrecht Daniel Thaer Institute of Agricultural and Horticultural Sciences, Faculty of Life Sciences, at Humboldt-Universität, Berlin. Among its programmes is the one-year “International Cooperation for Sustainable Development” vocational programme for postgraduate students.

As well as helping to develop weltwärts further and make it fit for the long term, PFIF organises educational and networking meetings to hear what returnees have to say and to represent their interests in dealings with the BMZ and the sending/host organisations.

People for Inclusion is a group of returnees who have different disabilities or impairments and campaign for equal participation in voluntary service and in many areas of society.  Its goal is to empower future volunteers who have disabilities or impairments and to encourage implementing organisations to take an inclusive approach.

weltwärts in Color is a group of returnees whose own experience of racial discrimination has led them to call themselves “people of colour” and who campaign for more awareness of issues such as racism and critical whiteness. Their primary goals are to make people of colour a firm part of the weltwärts programme, to empower them and to provide a safe environment in which they can ask questions and share information.

D+C is a bilingual (English and German) website, which Engagement Global launched in 2012. Its purpose is to foster intense debate, involving partners from around the world, of development issues. New articles are published online almost every day and there is a print magazine every two months, which can be downloaded in PDF format for free.

masala – the magazine that builds bridges - was founded by weltwärts returnees in 2014 and is now a grenzenlos project. The magazine’s aim is to break through hierarchical, colonial and racist ways of thinking and challenge stereotypes.

The EineWeltBlabla blog is a collection of posts on global thinking, critical consumption, new campaigns, the environment, industry, culture, digital matters and lots more.

Entwicklungspolitik Online (Development policy online) is an independent online portal with a wide range of information on international cooperation activities in the German-speaking region. It also has a job board with openings in the development sector in Germany and worldwide.

This free kit consists of a downloadable PDF packed with ideas to support global learning educators with their content, methods and organisation. It includes tips on preparation, exercises and tools.

The World University Service runs a global learning portal with information on the work done by Germany’s federal states plus education material. It includes information on the “Information Centre Educational Mandate North-South”, the Global Learning microsite (run by EWIK), the “German federal states in development policy” microsite and the European Global Learning Database (ENGLOB).

The “undjetzt?!” (“andnow?!”) conferences are designed for people looking for new possibilities for civic engagement, sharing ideas and decent and sustainable forms of work. The conferences are a grenzenlos project, organised by returnees. andnow? – take part or help to organise a conference yourself!

The “Fairwandler” award (a play on the German word “verwandeln” – “to change”) is intended as a form of public recognition of returnee engagement and a way of lending visibility to their work. It encourages, motivates and brings together young change agents.

The “Junges Engagement” (Young Engagement) component of the “Bildung trifft Entwicklung” (Education meets Development) programme supports the global education activities of returnees from development volunteer services by providing them with advice, networking opportunities, training and funding.

“Ideenwerkstatt von morgen” is a network for workshops and activities to promote sustainable development. The aim is to illustrate the links between global and economic factors in interactive workshops at schools and with youth groups and to raise public awareness of those links through arts projects.

This guide is full of ideas on how to lead a sustainable life and aims to encourage readers to play an active (or more active) role themselves. It features sustainable products, organisations, higher education programmes, books, films and much more.

This flyer is aimed at returnees who find themselves facing problems they cannot solve on their own. It includes contact details for a range of independent counselling and support services where they can find help quickly and anonymously.

This app takes a fun approach to sustainability issues. Users can team up to take action for a more sustainable world.

This brochure from Glokal e.V. is a good starting point for people who want to reflect on whether their perceptions and accounts of the Global South stem from racist and colonial structures (hence the “colonial greetings” in the brochure’s title). It illustrates the powerful impact of language and imagery and highlights some of the narratives often found in people’s accounts of their experiences.

“Das bunte Deck” is a pack of playing cards designed to promote equality and tolerance. It’s a fun way of getting people to think and stimulating a new form of debate. This pack of cards endeavours to represent society in all its diversity and dispel stereotypes we see around us every day.

This is an interactive online map featuring change initiatives and sustainable businesses. Fair trade, organic farms, shared workshops, alternative economic models, independent education initiatives and, of course, visionary co-living set-ups are just a few of the examples in the “world of tomorrow” shown on the map.

This speech by Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie at the TED Global Conference in 2009 has lost none of its significance over time. Essentially, her point was that one single story, one single detail, could lead to prejudice and stereotyping. If we only know small parts of a complex story, much remains hidden to us and restricts our view of things.

In this documentary, people in South Africa, Ghana and Gambia talk about their views of and experiences with German volunteers. Portraying a wide range of perspectives, this is a fascinating film about the diversity and complexity of encounters that come about in the context of volunteer services.