Voluntary Work

Every voluntary work is enormously rewarding for both sides. Here following you first find my thoughts about the topic on the occasion of the 30-year celebration of a women's shelter. Then the report of a former inhabitant of such a house.

Thoughts about voluntary work.
Time and again my friends ask me why I chose such an oppressive place as a women's shelter for my voluntary work. Then they propose more pleasant places for my service and add: they couldn't do that. But their idea of a women's shelter is wrong. Of course, it is also now and then a sad place but above all it is a place of hope -- and what could there be better than hope! In our house, the women and children who fled to us in a desperate situation are welcomed warmly and competently by the staff members. Both soothes their hurt souls.
In the days and weeks that pass before their new life takes shape the injuries and the despair slowly diminish and a new hope arises that a new life in tranquility and peace is possible.
The tasks that have to be mastered for that are huge and numerous. The search of an apartment, a workplace, a kindergarten respectively a school, the dispute with the administrative bodies, the legal confrontation with the abandoned man, the contestation of a terrible past -- all stand like huge cliffs that have to be climbed in between the past and the future. Without help this is impossible to manage.
To contribute to this undertaking gratifies the giver. Because, of course, no one would be doing such kind of voluntary work if it didn't give you the feeling to be doing good; if deep inside ourselves we weren’t plagued by a bad conscience because we don't have to bear such a heavy destiny. That is why my friends are doubly wrong believing my seemingly selfless doing additionally depressed me: neither is my doing selfless nor does it depress me. On the contrary, I admit to the selfish joy that it brings to help others -- even though admittedly it isn't always easy.

Report of a former inhabitant of a women's shelter
I am 27 years old, have two children and come from the Congo. I tell my story in the hope to encourage women who suffer. At the age of 16 I was married to a man I had never seen before in my home country. The marriage was arranged between the two families because my husband lived here in Germany. Three years later I too found myself here -- in an unknown country, an unknown language, with an unknown husband. As my husband knew this country well, he did with me what he wanted. I was forced to submit, I had no choice. Sometimes I fled into dreams in order to escape reality. Because it was difficult to bear. I had no hope ever to get out of this. Somehow I was tied to my suffering. I even wanted to accept that it was normal.
Until the day I learned that there were people who might be able to help me, who would even give me a place in which to save myself. I established contact and ended up in a women's shelter.
From the first day on I had the impression to be in a different world. I felt safe, free -- it was the first time that I felt like that. In the years of humiliation, of oppression you begin to underestimate yourself. You believe to be incapable, but then suddenly you learn that you are capable of anything and that you have the same rights as every human being.
It were the women in the women's shelter who gave me back the confidence in my own abilities. Because that doesn't happen on its own. I was lucky to have found women who gave me their time and listened to me. That is how step-by-step my wounds healed.
From the moment I had decided to leave I felt the responsibility to have destroyed something that had united our two families. For an African the family is very important, and it isn't easy to contradict one of their decisions. My family, my friends, and I exerted pressure on me.
That is why I needed people who would encourage me to continue the path I had chosen in my own place as well. I felt very bad. I was alone with my children, I didn't know anybody, I didn't know where to begin. The women who came to visit me were now my family, they strengthened my self-confidence and gave me a feeling of security. They helped me with numerous visits to the authorities. That is how I got to know the German society that had been unknown to me before.
Today I am happy. I have an apartment, my children go to a kindergarten respectively a school, I am free, I am well. I do not regret having made this decision. As a result of it I can hope for many things that were totally unimaginable before, like a vocational training for examples.
I would like to thank all the women who have helped me and to ask them to go on helping women in need so that those too can recover their smile.
To you who have lost your smile I would like to say: don't lose hope. You are not meant to suffer. Keep your confidence!