Student reporting

Summary Human Service Week 2022  

Human Service Week 2022 (28th-31st March) has ended now and about 130 students from six different countries all over the world participated this year. Like last year the Summer School took place via zoom, which enabled many international students to be part of it.  

We started the first day of the Human Service week under the topic of “Human Services in Action: Helping Refugees from Ukraine“. In a student presentation from Poland, we heard about the current situation in Poland with Ukrainian refugees fleeing to Poland and which ways we can support refugees in practical ways. Following this, we talked about sustainability and the role of Human Services from a global perspective in Student Presentations with the topics “What is Sustainability?“, “Sustainability and the responsibility of organizations in the social sector“, and “Economic Sustainability. Every presentation was ensued by dynamic discussions between the participants with different perspectives from various countries.  

On the second day, we discussed the themes “Sustainability in and of Social Work”, “Sustainable Perspective in the heritage of modern society” and “Environmental Social Work” and finished off the day with a well-visited Meet & Greet for the students. 
The next day was reserved for working in internationally mixed student groups coached by teachers. The participants talked about five different Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and discussed the role of Human Services in the field of SDGs in general, shared best practice examples from their countries, and collected ideas, on what else could be done.  

On the last day, the student groups presented their great results on the SDGs “Reduced Inequalities”, “Sustainable consumption and production”, “Good health and wellbeing“, “No Poverty” and “Sustainable cities and communities”.   

The ending was filled with the farewell, the next steps, and the perspective of summer school 2023.

We would like to thank everyone who helped organize Human Service Week 2022, all 130 participants and the participants of the preparatory group for the main organization.  

We are already looking forward to next year and hope that Human Service Week 2023 will be just as exciting and informative as this year!  

Elisabeth Depner, Evangelische Hochschule Nürnberg 

For the Human Service Week Team 2022