FÖJ is the abbreviated name for “Freiwilliges Ökologisches Jahr” or “Voluntary Ecological Year”. It is an educational year that offers young adults the opportunity to become active in environmental protection, nature conservation, and one-world activities.
Furthermore, the FÖJ provides a good opportunity to find or confirm ideas for your future career.
The FÖJ offers a large number of project sites (Einsatzstellen) all over the federal state of Schleswig-Holstein which provides a broad variety of focus topics. This allows young adults to gain a lot of new experiences and get involved in various environmental topics, such as environmental education, “Global Learning”, landscape conservation, agriculture and so on.
The activities and projects that we offer help teach practical life lessons and enable you to develop your own ideas and gain new experiences.
This program is offered to those who have already finished their mandatory school attendance and who are not yet 26 years old when the voluntary year starts.
In Schleswig-Holstein, the FÖJ starts August 1st and ends July 31st. During this time, volunteers will be actively working in one of more than 110 environmental projects.
Distributed throughout the year, will be five seminars where you will get to meet fellow FÖJ-participants from the other projects in Schleswig-Holstein. For at least one of these seminars, you will get to plan it together in a team of other volunteers, with support from a pedagogical team. The seminars will deal with various environmental topics, such as mobility, consumption, climate, energy, diversity of species, culture, etc.