German Youth Group Fulfills A Promise
During the recent AYUDH youth retreat The Joy of Giving at M.A. Center, Germany, pledges were made to implement at least one small, local project. As the hosts of the retreat, the German group wanted to be one of the first ones to fulfill their pledge and contribute something to their community. View a slideshow ›
15 youngsters from all over Germany met in Berlin from August 10 – 12 to do just that. On the first day, the youth set up a stall at a charity-flea-market and sold items that friends and relatives had donated in order to raise funds to support the educational initiatives of Embracing the World® in India.
On the second day, the youth undertook a cleaning campaign in one of Berlin's largest public parks. Armed with brooms, gloves, trash bags and gripping tongs, the youth split up into several groups to remove thousands of cigarette buds, plastic items and broken pieces of glass from the grounds of the park. One of the participants remarked: “The reactions of the people in the park were really different. Some people thanked us for our work, one little Turkish girl even took a gripping tong and helped us for one hour. At the end, she wanted to take home some cleaning material, in order to keep the park clean in the future. Others were really sceptical because they had never seen youngsters doing this kind of work on a voluntary basis - one old lady thought we were searching something really valuable on the ground. When we told her that we were here to collect the trash, she said that we must be criminals, who do this kind of work as a punishment. Learning that we were doing the cleaning out of our free will, she obviously got a shock…”
Even though the youth could not clean up the whole park during this one day, they were happy to at least having cleaned up one part of it, thereby setting an example of selfless service and care for nature.