Current Projects:

In August 2011 a group of 15 young people from Birmingham has come to Mahlow to take part in a football tournament with youngsters of a similar age (D-Youth) from the local football club BSC Preussen 07. The young people were accommodated in hostel conditions on the club premises, while the adult supervisors lived with local families. The week’s programme included, besides football, other communal activities like cooking according to local speciality recipes and sight-seeing visits to Berlin. Next year it is hoped that a return visit to Birmingham can be arranged.

Past Projects:

Exchanges and visits between young people in Birmingham and the Mahlow-Teltow region have regularly taken place since 2002, at first in accordance with the aims of the Noel and Jacqueline Martin Fund, then subsequently, since July 2008, of the Noel and Jacqueline Martin Foundation.

Three trips to Birmingham – in April 2002, October 2003 and September 2004 – were organized by the Association ‘Friends of the Herbert Tschaepe Schools’. The youngsters taking part met Noel Martin and discussed with him questions of racism and xenophobia. They met local young people and experienced at first hand how people of different races and origins live and work together. A return visit of young people from Birmingham to Mahlow took place in July 2006.

In October 2006 the ‘Brandenburg Sport Youth’ initiated a street soccer ‘Tournament for Tolerance’ as part of the so-called ‘Brandenburg Days in London’. The tournament took place in Birmingham as the highlight of a week’s stay in the city organized by the ‘Sport Youth’. Noel Martin opened the tournament and presented the prizes to the winners. In the course of the week  the young people also had the opportunity to visit and talk to Noel Martin.

A further  international street soccer tournament took place in the summer of 2009, this time with youngsters from a German-English group playing against another group from Poland and Israel, thus setting new accents in the Foundation’s work. Memorably, the young people from these four countries undertook a group outing to the Auschwitz Memorial and Museum in Poland, partly funded by the Noel Martin Foundation and the Foundation ‘Grosses Waisenhaus zu Potsdam’.

In June 2010 four young boys aged 13 and 14, together with two adult supervisors, from the Birmingham football club Continental Star FC came to Mahlow for a few days, staying with host families. They had a full programme arranged for them, including a day at a local school, playing football, sightseeing in Berlin – with breakfast in the Reichstag restaurant – and performing their own special rap song composed for the visit: Don’t judge me for the colour of my skin.

 Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_9eNMH8pJ4

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