Field Journal Week 2 - Sunday, May 26th

My first week at GSBTB flew by. I taught music lessons the first three evenings, helped with their German and English “Sprachkaffee” (events where about 60 people fill their auditorium and practice languages), and sat in on GSBTB’s team meetings. The organization employs about 10 people (many just part-time) to plan the programs, apply for grants, and do other official administrative work. But this is just the superstructure – most of the real labor and grunt work is done by an extremely strong network of very committed volunteers, who organize the events, recruit, and donate their time and expertise. 

One task of mine  that I hadn’t anticipated, and which would turn out to use up the majority of my time, was childcare. A lot of GSBTB’s events are geared toward adult women, such as their art therapy classes and Frauensprachkaffee (basically a female support group). The organization was in constant need of a volunteer to watch the children, so that the participants could have this time to focus on themselves. To be totally honest, I spent the first week feeling quite annoyed about this. I’m not the biggest kid person, and I also saw a large gender gap in terms of which interns and volunteers were asked to watch the children versus assigned other jobs. It’s also incredibly exhausting to babysit large groups of kids at one time, especially when they varied as much in age as these kids did. Some of them spoke perfect German, but others had no language in common with me. They had a ton of energy, too, which led them to get a bit riled up. I felt underprepared and a bit overworked. 

Looking back, babysitting the kids didn’t necessarily get easier over the next five weeks. However, as I got to know the mothers of the kids, and as I became familiar with the NGO’s operation, I saw that childcare was perhaps the single most impactful thing I could have done for the people GSBTB is meant to serve. Childcare is an often-unaffordable expense, even in Europe. This was one of the tougher pills to swallow, as someone who would love to work at some sort of community-building nonprofit someday. The most needed jobs are not always the ones you need any kind of university degree for, and they’re not the most noticed or glamorous jobs either.