Seitenwechsel : Changing roles

On Friday 24th April 2009 a week long internship of Seitenwechsel at Café Augenblicke came to end and I was on my way back to home. While passing through the streets of Sternschance (a famous area in Hamburg), I had some kind of strange feeling. Were these the same Sternschance streets, where many of weekend evenings we have spent in cafés or in bars? I could not believe that in the very center of such colorful place (or ‘party’ place) full of clubs, cafes and bars, there existed absolute different world of Jesus center and it’s Café Augenblicke. I was in a deep thinking of if it was end of my internship or new beginning of perspective towards life.

JesusCenter, Hamburg

During many of our business presentations and seminars, we spoke about business plans counting in millions and billions of Euros. However, we often neglect the consideration of number of people in our own society, for whom even a meal worth a Euro was expensive. Lot of time we spoke about Corporate Social Responsibility and our role as manger in corporate world to be accountable for everyone who has stake in our day to day business. But I must say a new chapter of social responsibility was understood by me during one week of social internship.


with Neomi and Sarah at Cafe Augenblicke

Recently I participated for the Seitenwechsel® program, at Café Augenblicke at Jesus center e.V, Hamburg. The main idea behind Seitenwechsel® program or “Changing role” as directly translated in English is to prepare understanding for executives and managers from corporate world towards the social responsibility.

Manny (a regular guest at Cafe Augenblicke)

Organizations such as Jesus Center have a very important role in society no matter what the cultural, ethnical or regional differences are. The internship at Café Augenblicke not only provided me and great opportunity to understand how social problems in Germany are being tackled but also it was a wonderful experience of working with a motivated team comprising of different personalities coming from different backgrounds and working towards one goal. I should say, I have better understanding of a person whom I see on the street bagging or into addictions of drugs or/and alcohol or from the environment of violence. I will never forget the discussion with these guests coming to the Café and their struggle with the life. It widened my personal horizons and forced me to reconsider my own values.

Some of nice memories at Cafe Augenblicke

Of course one week of social-internship is definitely not enough, but it is in fact enough to refresh your conscious about the environment around you and your social responsibility towards it. I hope that NIT will continue to encourage its students to participate into such programs in the future. These efforts boost the future managers in the society by helping them learn to deal with people from different cultural backgrounds and mindsets and also to make them responsible citizen.
At last the only words that come to my mind are from one of the brouchers of Jesus Center e.V...“Damit das Leben Gewinn”... (with that the life has won…)

-Hemant Nagda
June 2009