Peace and Sustainability on the Syllabus
At UWC Robert Bosch College in Freiburg, teenagers from all over the world learn what cooperation between cultures and across borders looks like. The international residential college places special emphasis on sustainability and community service. Students work regularly in the 500-year-old monastery garden and each week they volunteer at the local food bank. Since its foundation in 2014, more than 400 young people from 114 countries have graduated from UWC Robert Bosch College. To celebrate its fifth anniversary, we asked alumni from Syria, Pakistan and India what their time at UWC means to them.
#aufgenommen: The whole world in one place
22-year-old Ming Kanlongtham from Thailand was in the first cohort of students to study at UWC. Above all, he was impressed by everyone’s willingness to accept responsibility for themselves, for others and for the environment:“Going out there and trying to make a change, trying to make an impact in the world.” Ming is studying Liberal Arts with a focus on International Relations in Tokyo. He recently returned to Freiburg for a semester abroad.
“When will I get to live with people from countries I might never visit and maybe never heard of before coming here,” asks 21-year-old Natalie Kasem. “The people here are now part of my personality,” she says. Natalie graduated in 2017 and is now studying medicine at Universität Freiburg.
“Before coming here, I didn’t know how different the world outside Pakistan was,” 18-year-old Arham Hasmi remembers. During his time in Freiburg, students from India were the ones who became his closest friends. UWC makes possible what decades of conflict between the neighboring countries of Pakistan and India have rendered difficult. After his graduation this Summer, Arham started studying psychology, literature and creative writing in the US.
UWC Robert Bosch College is one of 18 United World Colleges (UWC) around the world. It is among the most recent members of the global movement whose mission it is to "make education a force to unite people, nations and cultures for peace and a sustainable future." Over a period of two years, young people from all over the world and from very different backgrounds live and learn together in an environment that fosters tolerance and intercultural understanding. The college follows the International Baccalaureate (IB) curriculum and awards the internationally accredited diploma at the end of the two years. Founded in 2014 by the Robert Bosch Stiftung und Deutsche Stiftung UWC, it offers 100 places for new students each year. Students at UWC are selected by the independent UWC national committees exclusively on the basis of merit and irrespective of their parents' income or socio-economic background.