Arrival at the Karl von Draiß School in Mannheim.

It is a "School without Racism, School with Courage" and you can see that.

Not only by the topics and the togetherness, but also by the colorful composition of the students. Mannheim is a city where almost every second person has a migration background. So it's part of everyday life here that students from other countries receive additional instruction in German at the same time.

 The principal and Mrs. Erkoç, English and German teacher, welcomed me warmly. It was she who had organized and prepared everything so that the 7th graders of the school could get to know pics4peace.

We were a little early, so we had a little tour of the building first: a beautiful, new, bright school building with a wide view of the outdoors from the classrooms, a cafeteria, breakfast room, library with comfortable reading places on wide cushions on the floor, music room with all kinds of instruments, technical equipment and parquet flooring for the good acoustics. It's a great place to learn and be! Mrs. Erkoç and Mr. Weis, who teaches music as well as English, also participated in the workshop with more than 40 students aged 12 to 13.

After an introductory part with a film, many pictures and examples, we discussed what moves the young people before it went into the working groups.

Very serious topics came up and you could feel that the students know what is going on in our immediate neighborhood.

•  One boy talked about how it was bad that babies are born in prisons and have never been outside even though they are older.
•  One of them asked how people can still pay for their daily lives as prices continue to rise and money loses value.

 They referred, as Ms. Erkoç then explained to me, to Turkey, where they had friends or family. Their awareness of the problem clearly went beyond their own horizons.

There was also a wide range of topics that they chose in small working groups to work on creatively - as we do at pics4peace.

What came up for many was bullying. In conversation, some shared that they or their friends had experienced it themselves because of their appearance, skin color, religion, a hobby that sets them apart from others, or because one is a foreigner.

Other topics included:
Freedom - in politics, personal freedom, for animals, animal cruelty, factory farming, food production,
Poison in the field, poison for us, environmental pollution.

One of them also thought about appearance who determines what ist normal

• By what do I judge people?
• Who determines what is normal?
• By their character, or by whether they wear headscarves, are fat or thin, have a face you don't like...?
• How should it be?

Many decided to put their theme into a song, especially as a rap, and record it as a video. Some also wanted to beatbox to it. Mr. Weis, the music expert, immediately declared his willingness to support the kids in songwriting and recording, even in his spare time. Cool!!!

Other students thought of a poem; some wanted to paint a picture and write lyrics to it. There were also young people who wanted to continue their theme in the form of a play.

We are very excited to hear more from the students of Karl-von-Draiß-Schule.

They also wanted to take part in the song4peace / song4europe #leuchtsignal. They were the first to hear it.
 Would be cool if they were also the first to submit their song clip to us!

THANK YOU all for being there! You guys were great!