The study trip of the students of the University of Applied Pedagogy (HSAP) to Chicago on the topic of “Social Work with Children and Adolescents in the United States of America” had the goal to find out how social work is organized there and to compare this with the German form. Especially the topic “racism” should be considered there. In the run-up to the trip, some things had to be organized. This included not only booking the flights and accommodation, but also securing the financing of the trip as well as working out various program points on site. In order to be able to look at a broad picture of social work, we arranged appointments with very different institutions: the German Chamber of Commerce in Chicago, the Jane Addams Hull House Museum, Dominican University, the German International School Chicago and Whitney M. Young Magnet High School.

As the staff of the Chamber of Commerce told us: “It is difficult to draw a real comparison between two systems with such different principles! It is almost impossible not to make one system look better than the other and not to evaluate it, especially if you grew up in one of the two systems and can never understand the other to the same extent. With the study trip we got exciting insights into this other system and were invited to reflect on ours. The trip was a personal enrichment, but especially for our professional understanding.

Source: From the project report