The German Ministry of Foreign Affairs has developed a reward programme, the so-called International Award Winners Programme, to honour foreign pupils for special achievements in the German language. Since 1959, the Pedagogical Exchange Service of the Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs in the Federal Republic of Germany (PAD) has been inviting about 450 schoolchildren from around 90 countries worldwide to Germany for a four-week study visit.
Of these, the prize winners spend two weeks in German host families and attend a German school, and in further two weeks the young people aged between 15 and 17 years visit the cities of Cologne/Bonn, Berlin and Munich or Hamburg in an internationally mixed group. In order to get a comprehensive picture of how the Germans live, the prizewinners visit youth and sports events, museums and other cultural institutions, theatre performances and a university, among other things.
With Natascha (Class 9), the CDSC has for the first time provided an international award winner. She has faced a jury consisting of representatives of the Goethe Institute and the German Embassy in Bangkok and was able to convince within a large group of applicants so that she will receive one of the only two places in this program intended for Thailand. Thus, she will now go on a unique and eventful trip to Germany in July, from which she will return at the beginning of August with endless new impressions. We wish Natascha all the best and congratulate her once again on this great award.
