About us

Bring others together with students at events!

You enjoy accompanying fully organized events. You enjoy supporting others with their ideas. You enjoy designing. You have good event ideas. You want to learn more about event organization. You are looking for a volunteer position by students for students.

Our main work takes place during the semester breaks and especially before the start of the semester (February, March, April, and August, September, October). During this time, we organize most of the events that make it easier for new students to settle in and get to know each other.

During the semester, events only take place if the team feels like organizing something and if time allows it. There are many event concepts from the last 20 years in the areas of socializing, food, travel, regional topics, and freetime.

Want to get involved? Contact freizeit@studierendenwerk-mainz.de

Arrival Assistance—it's pretty self-explanatory what this is, but you can read more about it at the link. In short, it's about volunteering to help new students settle into their new place of study.

How much time does volunteering take?
The answer is threefold. Depending on how well you get along and whether you like each other, the time commitment will vary. The other factor that influences the time commitment depends on what kind of support and contact the newcomer wants. 

1. From “very short”: just picking them up and taking them to their apartment, to
2. “medium” helping them with administrative tasks and showing them around the city or surrounding area, to
3. “long” if you like each other and become good friends – but is that still volunteering or friendship?

For new students, arriving in a new city is usually nerve-wracking and exhausting. As an Arrival Helper, you make their arrival easier. You help where you can and want to. You figure some things out together, because together you are less alone. Sometimes it helps a little to point them in the right direction or organize a replacement for yourself if you can't make it. We ask arrivals not to have any expectations and to be happy about everything their Arrival Helper helps them with.

Arrival Helpers can help with the following, for example

Picking them up at the train station or perhaps even at the airport, helping them find their way to their apartment/dormitory, helping them move in, i.e., handing over the room and the handover protocol, helping them with shopping, helping them with administrative procedures, assisting them with questions about everyday life, buying a bicycle, finding your way around campus, study formalities, understanding and filling out forms, opening a bank account, finding your way around the dormitory and the new city.

You can register as an Arrival Helper here

Of course, we will be happy to issue you with a certificate for your commitment. Just ask.

Volunteer arrival assistants can be students or citizens of the region—from retirees to schoolchildren, with or without families—it doesn't matter.

Do we need to explain what a buddy program is or what a buddy does? If so, read on here.

Friendship is central to the program, alongside integration into local student life. Internationality is often a major focus of the buddy program. Many international students want to get to know locals, and many locals have returned from abroad and had good or bad experiences themselves. Many also want to continue to experience the international atmosphere. All of this is possible in the buddy program, whether in initial contact or in a buddy group. But it is important to remember that friendship is what you make of it. It always takes two sides, and the interest and commitment of both sides are important factors in whether a buddy match works.

Register for your volunteer position as a buddy

If your contact doesn't work out, why not join the buddy team, the event team, or the language café team?

The International Office at JGU accepts active participation in the buddy program as international experience. You can submit the certificate we issue, for example, when applying for scholarships.

Your experience report
Your experience report is a prerequisite for a certificate. When we issue you a certificate for your volunteer work, we will ask you about your experiences.

We are the Buddy Team! What we do is fun and should inspire others. We are a group. We organize events for all buddies.

About twice a semester, we do something together with all the buddies. We organize, plan, and carry it out together. In the summer, we have a barbecue, go to the climbing forest in Wiesbaden, share pizza in the winter, have game nights, go to black light mini golf... or do something completely different? Just meet other buddies and buddy groups and hang out with lots of buddies.

With you, we are freetime buddies!

buddy@studierendenwerk-mainz.de

Since 2010, we have been connecting students from all over the world with citizens of Mainz and the surrounding region who are interested in exciting volunteer work.

How much work does a friendship require? That's exactly what best describes how much effort it takes to participate in Fremde werden Freunde (Strangers Become Friends).

You can find out whether we are right for you by reading the quotes from host friends from previous years. Or you can read what students have to say about how Fremde werden Freunde has influenced their lives; the quotes from guest students are particularly suitable for this.

Feel free to arrange a meeting with the program coordinators and register online for Fremde werden Freunde.

Students cannot volunteer with Fremde werden Freunde. Either you benefit as a student participant in the program and are matched with host friends, or you get involved in the buddy program as a local and make friends with students.