Project funding

24,000 euros can the Studierendenwerk Vorderpfalz approve each year in funding for student projects. Upon application to the Communication Department, social, ecological or cultural projects can be supported with amounts between 100 and 1,000 euros (kultur.stw-vp.de). Due to the pandemic, the high level of planning uncertainty and the uncertainty of the students, this budget was virtually not used in 2021, as it was in 2020.

But the unclaimed funds are not "happily saved money", but rather another indication of the poor state of socialisation of the students in their own studies. The aim of the project funding was and is to enable students to acquire soft skills in social, ecological or cultural engagement alongside their studies. Because as I said at the beginning: we learn for life, not for school. And socialisation in one's own new student life is basically cancelled for another semester. We look forward with concern to poorly socialised leaders of tomorrow. Of course, we also realise that most of the measures and restrictions during the pandemic were right and necessary. It is not our intention to turn back the clock, but to see now that we must do everything possible to make up for these years of missed socialisation as quickly as possible. The next few semesters - assuming the pandemic situation develops positively - will be dedicated to trying to make up for the lost ground and really get the students into their studies before the first ones register for their bachelor's thesis.
In any case, we will encourage our students to get out of their parental comfort zone again and support them in making sense of the university not only as a place of teaching, but also as a place of living.

In total, we only approved 9 projects, one of which had to be cancelled again due to the pandemic. In the process, 4,200 euros in grants were awarded:

• 3,100 euros for projects in Landau,
• 970 euros for projects in Germersheim and
• 130 euros went to Ludwigshafen.
• No money went to students at Worms University of Applied Sciences, whose only submitted project was cancelled.

In 2022, we will again very actively advertise the funding opportunities and encourage our students to implement their own projects.