Gangway puts an emphasis on promoting the abilities for school and vocational training of juveniles and helps them with attaining school graduation and acquisition of a vocational training. The organization offers assistance to school drop-outs, young people who do not succeed in school for various reasons, and for juveniles who need a comprehensive closely structured environment.
For this purpose Gangway maintains permanently supervised and partly supervised group homes and independent-living apartments plus flexible and ambulatory care for juveniles who either have their own living quarters or live with their family. On the cargo-schooner "UNDINE" only young males are accepted, all our other offers are co-ed. The association has its own school that makes an intensive individual promotion of the juveniles possible and organizes first step work and qualification projects to promote integration into regular work and occupation.
The minimum admission age is 14 years. The group homes are open to juveniles starting from 13 years. Gangway works on the legal basis of the KJHG (§§27ff and §41ff). (Children and Youth Welfare Act)
Our goal for the juveniles in our care is to improve their ability to stand on their own feet, to aid them on their way to school graduation and to accompany them towards vocational maturity. We work action-oriented; the qualification offers to the juveniles are first steps. The center of our work is the connection of living, learning and working. Most of our juveniles originate from broken homes; often they already have social service careers. School attendance is usually interrupted for several years - despite compulsory schooling laws. For these juveniles, especially those who committed substantial criminal offences (e.g. breaking and entering, thefts, car related crimes, inflicting bodily harm etc.), most of the regular offers of public education are not adequate, do not appeal to them or are not accepted by them.
For these juveniles our program starts with the voluntary participation in a six month's journey on board our sailing ship. The benefit for the participants is on one hand to obtain separation from harmful environmental influences; on the other hand they will be able to collect exemplary life experiences through the various specific obligations and tasks on board of a sailing ship. In often laborious small steps they learn to accept rules and their fellow-men, they learn to structure a working day and to take responsibility in small areas of work, and later to take responsibility for ship, group and for themselves.
The group home, school and work project is located on pontoons in Hamburg port. It offers a home to the returning UNDINE-crew; on the other hand it is an integral component of all other forms of care that our organization offers. On the pontoons, an intermediate thing between ship and house, we work on the transfer of experiences made on board the UNDINE into the future "shore life" while maintaining the proven sets of rules of the on-board community. After fundamental social training during the sea-time now the change towards school and vocational qualification moves into the foreground. In addition to daily school attendance there are meaningful occupational offers in the afternoon. This concerns also physical activity, talents relating to crafts, seeing through of work assignments and thus the preparation for vocational training and occupation. Our school project with its own instructors and technicians is linked to and supported by the vocational school “Shipyard and Port” in Hamburg.
The pontoons and our two ships UNDINE and MARGARETA are an inexhaustible source of occupational offers, concerning repair, maintenance and reconstruction work. These predominantly not too difficult tasks, partially already known from the sea voyage, serve as well towards the preservation of the vessels and the pontoons as towards the acquisition of basic professional skills and work experience for the juveniles. Qualified training takes place in the workshops of the vocational school. Again and again we experience that juveniles, who are critically overtaxed by school, group or their domestic situation, can be held and stabilized using activities relating to crafts under appropriate guidance
After about 9 months some of the boys from the Undine-project graduate from school, along with juveniles from our other projects, while the younger ones and the slower learners go through a second year of school. The search for an apprenticeship or a further-qualifying school begins already while still in our school. After graduation the juveniles usually move into a group home “on shore” or into a supervised independent-living apartment.
With the growing ability to stand on their own feet and to care for themselves the juveniles need less and less care from us.
Roland Hummel (managing director)
