It all started 2015 when Lyn, the initiator of this project, sent all her friends and family a voice message regarding a rather discouraging incident at her placement in a Hamburger school. The message was about a group of stigmatized and discriminated black students, who were seemingly not entrusted with a bright future neither according to their teacher’s perception.  Hearing that and her call for a movement and a change for these black students touched my heart and evolved the urge to become part of the Vorbilder movement. But by then, I wasn’t in the team yet. Several meetings and discussion rounds with Lyn’s family and friends followed. Unfortunately, I couldn’t join all of them, due to some commitments at Uni. Nevertheless, I made sure to definitely keep myself up to date by always asking Lyn how far and which minor tasks I could do.

At some point my study workload increased and made me slow down with a few things. Nevertheless, I was very happy when my Uni stress went down and I was asked to visit the third meeting of Vorbilder’s first school in Wilhelmsburg, Hamburg! I was supposed to get an insight into Vorbilder and present myself as a potential mentor for the kids. The workshop leader, Lyn, also asked me whether I could prepare a sweet titbit for their workshop where the different levels of communication were themetised.  After this, I fell so much in love with the project, the kids, the team, just everything. I was highly impressed by the love and care that was shown towards the kids and also the very professional appearance of the Vorbilder team with their various feedback conversations among each other and the school social worker.

Today, I am a part of the team and assist in various organisational areas, such as preparing our fortnight mentoring workshops, organising events and supporting  general administrative and accounting tasks. I also love to cater for our Mentee’s and team member’s nutritive wellbeing by simply preparing small snacks for our mentoring workshops and team meetings.

 I love this wonderful organisation and its respective members, who make it that great and hopefully even greater in the future.

About me: 
My name is Katia A. Danquah and I joined Future of Ghana Germany in March 2018. I am part of the FoGG-Vorbilder Team, the career orientation and responsible for our internal operations. Besides volunteering, I am reading vocational education at the University of Hamburg. In my opinion, FoGG provides outstanding black role models and symbolises Black Excellence, Growth & Unity, that is the reason why I joined.