Project info
STERNENZELT for grieving children and their relatives – a project of the Ev. Familienbildung Main-Taunus
founded in 2000
one permanent part-time employee, eight volunteers
Project Management: Ms. Claudia Vormann
www.evangelische-familienbildung.de/projekte/trauergruppen-sternenzelt.de
Location: Bad Soden im Taunus
Town in the Taunus with approx. 21,000 inhabitants in the catchment area of Frankfurt a. M.
Project: Ground under the feet – movement offer for mourning children and young people from the entire Rhine-Main area
Each child’s or youth group meets twice a month; parallel to this, grief counseling for parents takes place.
Participating children and adolescents: currently approx. 40 plus 20 parents
Our support
Assumption of 100 % of the costs for the acquisition of movement materials incl. storage boxes and wall mounting (total € 3,216.62)
Funding period: 2nd half of 2022
The STERNENZELT project provides comprehensive support for children and young people from the Rhine-Main region whose father or mother has died.
The goal is to support grieving families in the self-determined shaping of their mourning process and to accompany them individually as needed.
The offers include accompaniment and counseling, mourning groups for children and adolescents, as well as offers for parents and relatives of the children. All services are free of charge for the grieving families.
The project operator
The Ev. Familienbildung Main-Taunus offers services for people from 0 to 100 years:
- Education: Educational trips, lectures, further education, childminder qualification, homework supervision, German as a foreign language
- Counseling: crisis intervention, family law counseling, unemployment café
- Support: camps for single parents, life with children, life in old age, faith courses, babysitter mediation
- Encounter: family retreats, day trips, creative and exercise activities, family cafés
The Ev. Familienbildung Main-Taunus is located in Bad Soden. There are annual courses and projects, e.g. the Schwalbacher Tafel, refugee counseling …
More information about the organization can be found here: www.evangelische-familienbildung.de
The STERNENZELT project offers support to grieving children and families. It accompanies children and young people in their grief in a safe place, gives them the opportunity to give their loss “a language“ and involves the families to strengthen them.
In addition, STERNENZELT offers training and counseling for daycare centers, schools and social institutions for children and youth work.
Ground under your feet
STERNENZELT wants to give children and young people new experiences and learning opportunities. The death of a parent has caused many things to falter. In a protected setting, the mourners can experience their resources and try out and practice new coping strategies. This enables the children to experience themselves as self-effective and to actively shape their future. Among other things, they benefit from body-oriented offerings.
The Elfriede Hengstenberg movement equipment offers a wide range of possibilities. When setting up and exploring the equipment, the focus is on independent exploration and experience, discovering or strengthening one’s own competencies and feeling the “ground under one’s feet” again. The team of STERNENZELT includes a Pikler pedagogue, who knows the special features of this movement offer well and passes them on.
For the children’s and youth groups, our foundation was able to purchase an extensive range of Hengstenberg equipment, which is used in the bereavement groups.
More information about the Hengstenberg equipment can be found here: basisgemeinde.de/ueber-uns-weiterbildung-paedagogik/hengstenberg-bewegungsansatz
Why we are committed to the project
We see STERNENZELT with its range of services as an important building block in overcoming a family crisis, which probably burdens the grieving families over a very long period. The offers appeal to us very much, especially because the team works resource-oriented and resilience-promoting.
The idea of using Hengstenberg equipment to open experiential opportunities for children to discover and develop new coping strategies for themselves is very appealing to us. These special movement experiments can bring about an amazing increase in self-confidence.
STERNENZELT is about trying new things – because it’s good for me to get back into action and feel effective …
Here I am allowed to be who I am.
Testimonials from grieving family members
Outlook
Within the framework of this first joint project, we have gained a good insight into the work of STERNENZELT. We can very well imagine further support.
