“Start” assistance for immigrant children
The Hertie Foundation supports the education of gifted and dedicated schoolchildren from immigrant families. A successful initiative for better integration.
Phuong Duyen Tran lives with her family in Berlin-Marzahn. The 16-year-old was born here. Her father emigrated from Vietnam to the then divided Germany 30 years ago. Many people associate Berlin’s Marzahn district with prefabricated, high-rise buildings and social problems. “When I tell someone where I‘m from, I can already see the thoughts flashing through their mind: ‘Aha, poor education’, stuff like that,” the school student says in a film about people in Berlin. Then she thinks: “I’ll show them!”
And that is exactly what Phuong Duyen Tran is currently doing. Since she is especially good at mathematics, she applied for a “Start” scholarship from the Hertie Foundation and is now receiving support on her road to university and a career. Applications for such scholarships are open to young people with an immigrant background who have good school grades and are socially engaged. The scholarship programme is one of the largest in Germany, and taking stock of the last ten years since the non-profit foundation was initiated, the results are quite impressive: 1,400 young people in 14 states are supported; 669 scholarship holders have already passed the university qualifying examination (Abitur) with an average grade of 2.0 (on a scale from 1 to 6). There are now initiatives to launch the Start scheme in Austria. In its anniversary year the Hertie Foundation speaks confidently of the Start scholarship as „a small civil rights movement”.
The speech to mark the tenth anniversary of Start and honouring the scholarship and its initiators was given by one who knows a lot about such things: Federal President Joachim Gauck. The idea of fighting to go your own way has been a major element in Gauck’s life, too. The President urged the scholarship holders to be committed to democracy, adding: “We believe in you! Not only as the experts of tomorrow, but as citizens of this country.”
www.start-stiftung.de/stiftung_hertie
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