Project info
Operator: HerausForderung e.V. Dorsten
founded in 2021 – 187 member families and 35 supporting members
Team Dorsten: 3 part-time staff, 40 volunteers
Contact persons: Mrs. Daniela Kasche, Dr. Stefanie Marzian, honorary chairwomen of the association
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 funding
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.
In February 2025, the association opened the first German Center for Neurodiversity in Children and Adolescents in Dorsten, and in the summer of 2025, the Thuringia regional group was founded in Weimar.
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, the association developed these measures – and more are being added all the time:
- Individual counseling and coaching
- Teen group “Your way” for young people aged 13 and above
This is a low-threshold service: open, free of charge, no registration required - Individual counseling
- Teen group “Your way” for young people aged 13 and above
- Networking with companies, universities, and local stakeholders (youth career assistance,
secondary schools, etc.) and joint offerings- Free intensive computer science workshops in cooperation with youth career assistance and the company NetTrek
- #ECHT exhibition with portraits of young people and adults who experience disadvantage – but are still following their own path with the message #ichhabECHTwasdrauf (I’ve really got what it takes)
- Project days and workshops for school classes on the topic of career counseling: Your Way – Your Style
- Participation in career counseling events
- Public relations
- 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.
My brain just works a little differently – I just need to figure out exactly how.
Charlotte, #ECHT participant
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.
