I have spent three days now at the Global Media Forum. I have met the other bloggers, I have made new friends and met old friends from all over the world. I have eaten and even danced during the famous GMF boat ride on the Rhine River. So besides the serious side of the conference, there is also a fun part to it.

One of my areas of interest as a trained journalist and as a trainer of people in media is the influence of the advancing digital world on journalism. That’s why I attended a workshop organized by the DW Akademie with the title: New Trainers for New Media? Challenges for Human Resources Development in Media Support in a Fast-Changing Media Landscape.

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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.

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