from Jan Matthes
In Leipzig, we started with a month of weekly welcome evenings, setting up groupchats for newcomers and have some of our older to students to be ‘buddies’ to the younger students.
The idea behind ‘integration-buddies’ is more a phrase to motivate our students.
We have around 15-20 students and after 1.5 years pioneering we have now the “first generation” learning to win the hearts and minds of the next generation.
The first step will be to integrate people. We want to offer help and care as fast as possible, to welcome them in and move past initial shallow conversations like “Hi, what’s your name and what do you study?” to deeper meaningful conversations.
Our final goal is to equip people and start having 1:1s.
But it all starts with healthy friendships.
It is up to the buddies how they go about it, but we encourage them to invite the students to join again (not only via message to all, but in person); text them via Whatsapp, ask them how we can help, have lunch with them , grab a coffee and be a good friend to them.
Please pray for the new cohort of students this academic year and that these buddies would be a blessing to them.
