In cooperation with the Central Welfare Board of Jews in Germany (ZWST), Building Bridges enables people with refugee backgrounds to assume an active role and participate in society. Participants in our project, so-called mediators, engage with their own peer group as representatives of active participation in social life as well as of equal opportunity. The focus here is on vulnerable groups with refugee backgrounds and thus people facing particular challenges in assuming an active role and experiencing participation. The combination of our leadership approach with our psychosocial support enables us to provide targeted measures to promote social and political integration as well as to strengthen mental health. It is this integrative approach that led to our project’s endowment of the National Integration Award by the German Chancellor in 2018.

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Goals

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• Through engagement within their own peer group as well as the host society,
  mediators in our leadership groups enable and strengthen social and political
  participation

• Mediators support newly arrived refugees as multipliers

• We provide intercultural, psychosocial health care and violence prevention for
  refugees, with a specific focus on vulnerable groups such as children and women

• We provide psychosocial consultations as well as training for service providers
  working with refugees

• We focus on the creation, strengthening and operationalization of self-help
  structures

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