International Affairs / Project Funding

When we talked about the importance of developing social skills alongside academic studies in the past years, we never thought that we would be able to experience this truth in such a concrete way as we did in 2020. While our students made the best of the situation and were flexible enough to adapt, in conversations we have repeatedly noted how important social proximity and an undisturbed social space are for students.

We therefore strongly advocate doing everything possible to make direct social interaction possible again. Certainly, the pandemic has made us aware of how great our digital backlog in teaching is and how much we can enrich teaching through the meaningful use of digital teaching. In my opinion, however, this is no substitute for the social cosmos of higher education - to which the Studierendenwerk as a service provider naturally belongs - which for many students sets the course for their own place in society and marks a crystallisation point in their own vita.

In 2020, two areas were significantly affected by the pandemic. Firstly, our work with and for our international students and the project funding for student projects, which we would like to briefly outline here.

International Affairs
The work in the area of international affairs was largely at a standstill during the business year. All activities - both already budgeted and planned - could not be carried out. Either the travel restrictions from the first wave onwards meant that there were not as many internationals on campus as in the usual years, or planned activities had to be cancelled due to hygiene regulations.
We tried to improve the situation for the internationals as much as possible through the student dorm tutors, who were supervised by the Communication Department. But here, too, our hands were tied in terms of both team strength and the legal possibilities.
So 2020 was a particularly difficult year for many international students. The distance from family, fears related to the pandemic, the empty campus and the personal isolation in the dormitory were extraordinary burdens that we could only insufficiently absorb with our resources. Often, all we could do was refer the students to our counselling department.
Our cooperation with the Centre Régional des Œuvres Universitaires et Scolaires d'Orléans-Tours (CROUS d'Orléans-Tours), which had been in place since 2014, was also put on hold during the financial year. A one-week exchange between the partner CROUS and our student union took place annually for interested students. This had to be suspended for 2020 and will probably not take place in 2021 either.
We hope to be able to intensify our work in the area of international affairs again in 2021 and to have more opportunities to integrate international students into everyday university life and student life on campus. The team has used the "break" to define new projects and structures in order to further expand and professionalise the services in the area of international affairs.

Student project funding
Due to the cancellation of most events due to the pandemic, we were only able to allocate 6,318.38 euros of our budget of 24,000 euros and thereupon decided in the 1st quarter of 2020 to make the remaining funding (17,781.62 euros) that we had budgeted for student projects available to our Counselling Department to support students in financial need. By the time the BMBF introduced the student bridging aid in June 2020, applications for financial aid there had tripled. We have thus discontinued our own project funding from March for 2020.

Nevertheless, we were still able to support 11 student projects until the first lockdown, 4 of them in Landau, 5 in Germersheim, which is always very active, and 2 in Worms. Unfortunately, the funds in Ludwigshafen were still not taken up.

In 2021, we will resume funding student projects after the bridging aid for students has cushioned the worst financial hardships. Moreover, many students have adapted well to the situation and use digital event formats very professionally where they are possible and make sense. Nevertheless, in our communication with students, we are increasingly realising that nothing can replace personal contact and that digital formats can and will only be a stopgap solution. Especially in the area of project funding, it is becoming abundantly clear that the social, ecological or cultural commitment of students is a very important factor in the formation of soft skills, without which successful study is not possible.

In the new year, we will therefore restart the funding as soon as possible and continue to support student projects upon application. We hope that a more active student life on campus will then be possible again.