Education and career of immigrant children as scholarship holders of the HERTIE Foundation (START program)
Funding: Hertie Foundation
Duration: 2007 to 2008
Project management: Prof. Dr. Michael Bommes
Project staff: Maren Wilmes and Irina Grünheid
The project aims to answer the question of how the HERTIE Foundation's START program contributes to gifted and committed children of immigrants seizing opportunities for school education and, based on this, career opportunities in important professional areas, as well as developing and expanding their willingness to take on social responsibility as citizens. This will be done on the basis of a statistical overview and evaluation of the sponsored pupils, their migration background, their family and social life situation and their educational pathways. In a second step, the non-material and material benefits received or utilized by the sponsored pupils will be described. In addition to this quantitative part of the study, around 30 interviews will also be conducted with former scholarship holders from all over Germany in order to gain a more detailed understanding of their educational and career aspirations, the challenges and hurdles relevant from their point of view and the private, family and public responsibilities in which they see themselves.
The results of the study should provide an insight into the way in which gifted and committed children from immigrant families use the opportunities of education and training against the background of the problem constellations that are significant for them and explained above, how they face the associated challenges and in what way the services of the START program have helped them.