Project report: Reflection and vision of social engagement
After the SBW Berlin scholarship recipients presented an overview of their social commitment and project work to date at the beginning of January 2025, they are now starting to prepare a detailed project report for the end of the semester. It goes without saying that SBW Berlin is supporting them in these endeavors. Consequently, the project report workshop took place on January 25, 2025.
Proactive, results-oriented planning
In the workshop, scholarship recipients received essential information on SBW Berlin’s expectations towards them as well as on the structure and content of the report. On the one hand, the report serves to reflect on the project work to date and to analyze goals and challenges and, on the other hand, to plan ahead. What visions do the scholarship recipients have for the continued development of their social projects in the upcoming semester? Which new goals have they set for the summer semester 2025? How does the timetable for the next six months look? Those are undoubtedly important questions that will help the scholarship recipients to shape their project work in a result-oriented way.
Sharing and writing about social engagement
It is certainly a challenge to write about project initiatives and ideas instead of just talking about them and exchanging ideas. In the project report workshop, we therefore talked about the difference between a goal and a task and tried to transform resolutions into result-oriented goals using various examples. We realized that resolutions (e.g. “I will volunteer more”) raise further questions (how, when, where, why, etc.).
To better distinguish result-oriented goals from action-oriented tasks, we added other important information in our workshop exercises (e.g. “I will volunteer at the soup kitchen of the Stadtmission once a week from April to September and help out with the food distribution in order to write a blog article about the operation, effectiveness and reach of a soup kitchen for SBW Berlin’s website by September.”). Although this was not easy, everyone emphasized how helpful these exercises were.
While we talked about how scholarship recipients typically approach writing a report or seminar paper, we also discussed whether and how AI tools are or could be helpful in the writing process. Nonetheless, scholarship recipients – even if they use these tools – should critically review AI suggestions and ultimately write their project reports themselves. Of course, scholarship recipients will also receive feedback from SBW Berlin on their reports and have the opportunity to submit a draft by mid-February. In addition, further discussions on the preparation of the project reports will take place over the next few weeks during the check-ins. This means that SBW Berlin does not leave its scholarship recipients hanging when it comes to writing but also offers support and mentoring in this area.
Where do things go from there?
After the SBW Berlin scholarship recipients submitted the project reports at the end of the semester, SBW Berlin evaluates their social commitment in the winter semester 2024/25 and assesses the feasibility of the newly set goals to be achieved in the upcoming semester and the revised project timeline. SBW Berlin also looks at the academic performance achieved by the scholarship recipients in the winter semester 2024/25, the documentation of the project work and the proactive development of the projects in general and then shares final feedback with the scholarship recipients. The latter will then also find out whether the requirements and criteria that were decisive for the award of the scholarship continue to apply and whether a re-award of the scholarship for the summer semester 2025 can therefore be justified.
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