Human Service Week 2021

This year Human Service Week 2021 (29-31 March 2021) has now ended. About 150 students and in total 15 experts had discussed various themes about Human Services in different contexts. We welcomed our guests from 8 different countries all over the world. Due to the pandemic, this year Summer School took place via zoom. This allowed more students to attend the summer school and to be even more international.

On our first day the Human Service Week started under the headline „Focusing Human Services“. Themes such as “Taking care matters! - The impact of human services to well being of society”, “What we can learn from each other – the innovative potential of International Social Work” and “Innovating our mindset: Reflections and Reflexivity at the content of Education in Human Service Professions” fulfilled this day. Discussions between students and experts followed the sessions and made the topics very agile and intensive.

The second day was themed with „Focusing Society“ where social issues had been discussed. It started with the session “Be the change you want to see – Social Entrepreneurship as a changemaker” and was followed by an very interesting interview with the Indian social entrepreneur Lakshmi N Menon.

After that, the concept and function of the program ZieGe / GoAt was introduced.

The most creative part of the Human Service Week followed with an “participatory art” where the participants were able to create their own house of plants and animals.

Last but not least developing inclusive societies and explaining current situation in terms of people with disabilities where discussed. It was followed with introducing possibilities of inclusive events and projects. All topics were received with high interest and lively discussions.

Our last day highlighted management and leadership issues in the social field. Different guidelines and systems how to manage a crisis had been introduced in the session “How to manage a crisis – lessons learned from the pandemic”.

The following theme “Leadership between bureaucracy and transformation” was combined with an active exchange between the participants in groups where the question got discussed how the future leader should be like.

The ending was filled with the farewell, the next steps and the perspective summer school 2022.

We would like to thank everyone who helped organize Human Service Week 2021, all over 150 participants and the experts for the main organization.

We are already looking forward to next year and hope that Human Service Week 2022 will be just as exciting and informative as this year!

Your Human Service Week team