History of the Association

History of the Association

Our association has sprung from the association “Zugvögel – Aves de paso, South-North volunteer exchanges”, which was founded in March 2011 by weltwärts volunteers in Ecuador. The goal of the old association was to enable Ecuadorians to do a voluntary service in Germany.

The demand for a reverse volunteer program had also been formulated by participants in other countries. In Nepal a group of volunteers founded the association “Sathisanga. Nepalesian-German volunteer program”. In Uganda and Rwanda similar groups were formed.

In autumn 2011 first efforts were made to connect the existing groups. That had various reasons among them the wish to be able to take on bureaucratic challenges more easily, to benefit from shared experiences and to organize events together.

In January 2012 the first fusion meeting was celebrated in Berlin and on the 8th of January the new association “Zugvögel, interkultureller Süd-Nord-Austausch e.V:” was founded. The old Zugvögel association was dissolved in a reunion on the 14th of April 2012. The association’s property was signed over to the new Zugvögel and the majority of the members of the former association are now involved in the new one. The new association also took over accompanying the two volunteers that had already arrived in Germany at that time.

Since then the association has been steadily growing and by now encompasses over 300 members in 20 regional groups all over Germany.