In my last entry, I wrote about my motivation for founding the local chapter of ArbeiterKind.de in Mainz. Today I want to share some of the experiences I have had through my activities for this organization as well as those of my friends.

One statement comes immediately to mind for me:

“I didn’t tell them that I was receiving BaföG [educational loans and grants available from the state in Germany]. And I felt so terrible as they were criticizing ‘all of those cheaters who would steal money from the state’.”

read more

Four years ago, I founded a local chapter of ArbeiterKind.de in Mainz, the city where I studied. The non-profit organization ArbeiterKind.de supports children whose parents didn’t attend university as they pursue college degrees. After I read an article about ArbeiterKind.de, I decided that I definitely had to support the organization for two reasons.

First, in the article Katja Urbatsch, the founder of ArbeiterKind.de, described the typical challenges for children of non-academic families after they finish high school. Many barriers seemed familiar to me: The insecurity about the value of studying certain subjects, like the humanities. A question I struggled with in the beginning was: Wouldn’t it be better to work and earn money immediately after high school? Later, the confusion arising from the task of writing initial academic papers was tough for me.

read more

Last time, I wrote about how the competition in the job market in Kenya is getting stiffer by the day. More and more people now have master’s degrees, for example. The question is: Where does that leave those who cannot afford to climb the education ladder that high?

There are other options. One can go to a tertiary college. I have several cousins and other relatives who did not have the finances to go on to university once they finished high school, even though they had worked hard enough to get grades that would have been sufficient for entering a university.

read more