Project info
HerausForderung e.V. Dorsten
founded 2021
Contact persons: Mrs. Daniela Kasche, Dr. Stefanie Marzian, honorary chairwomen of the association
www.herausforderung.online
Location: Dorsten and surrounding area
Project: Vocational guidance for highly gifted young people
For the affected students in the Dorsten region, appropriate career counseling will be established and expanded in the coming years.
Our sponsorship
Contribution to the costs of designing, setting up and implementing this project with € 5000 per year for the next three years.
Funding period: 2023 to 2025
HerausForderung e.V. is a contact point for cognitively gifted and highly gifted, highly sensitive and/or autonomous children and adolescents and their families in Dorsten and far beyond.
Individual counseling, coaching, network building with companies, universities and local actors, project days/workshops with school classes, participation in events from the field of career counseling … were planned for highly gifted young people, especially those who, for various reasons, cannot reach their potential (underachievers).
The project operator
The association HerausForderung e.V. closes a gap in the school education system for the above-mentioned children and adolescents and their parents, which presents special challenges. The association focuses primarily on underachievers (highly gifted underachievers) who hardly or not at all develop their potential at school and perform far below their potential. The reasons for this are as individual as the children and young people themselves. The association works on three levels:
- Counseling and support of the affected children and adolescents
- Counseling of parents and referral/funding for diagnostics (professionally qualified testing of IQ and other competencies)
- Training and consulting of teachers and schools with diagnostic possibilities, creation of suitable framework conditions and information about further support possibilities
The association is always in exchange with well-known educational scientists and advocates individual learning – for all children and young people regardless of their social background, as well as their individual competencies and abilities.
Vocational guidance for highly gifted young people
Children and young people whose academic performance falls significantly short of what would be expected based on their enormous potential are referred to as underachievers or highly gifted underachievers.
The HerausForderung association would like to offer the young people concerned suitable career counseling if, for example, their regular school-leaving certificate is not sufficient for an apprenticeship or a course of study. It also aims to support young people who lack self-confidence due to poor grades or systemic disadvantage.
Specifically, several measures are planned, under development or already implemented:
- Individual case counseling and coaching
The teen group “Your way” was founded in 2023. Young people aged 13 and over meet here and work on “their way” and “their style”. Your way is low threshold: open, free, without registration. The teen group is a carefully designed program that focuses on the topics of “personality development”, “strengths” and deviating from the norm, “being different”. - Networking with companies, universities and local stakeholders (youth employment assistance, secondary schools …)
In December 2023, the first free intensive IT workshop was held in collaboration with the youth vocational assistance service and the company NetTrek. Others will follow in January and February 2024. - Project days/workshops with school classes
In 2023, 3 career guidance workshops “Your Way – Your Style” were held for young people. The results were presented at the WERKstattWORTE exhibition on the Dorsten Basic Law Days in May 2023. - Participation in events from the area of career counseling
- Public relations
The WERKstattWORTE exhibition opening featured a musical contribution on the topic of “Everyone has the right to education” and an interactive keynote speech by Dr. Stefanie Marzian. The exhibition stations were also designed to be interactive. - Fundraising
Why we are committed to the project
The founders of the association convinced us with their concern, because they are explicitly not concerned with elite education or with transporting as much knowledge as possible into particularly intelligent children and young people as quickly as possible. Instead, they see particularly intelligent children and young people as young people with many facets and a special profile. They want to help the children and young people develop the skills and opportunities they have within them for their future professional lives that have not yet come to light.
Our wish: An inclusive society that understands differences between people as normal and accepts them. We want everyone to be able to develop their potential and thus contribute – participate.
Daniela Kasche and Dr. Stefanie Marzian, founders and chairpersons of HerausForderung e.V.
Dream job as a pilot – I thought it would always be a dream. But now I have hope that it could work out.
Sophie, participant in career guidance workshop
Outlook
We have been very happy to support the association in these projects since 2022 and are impressed by the enormous commitment to making the vision of an inclusive society a reality with many ideas and big steps.
