Helene Lange High School

Helene Lange High School Hamburg is a public high school in the southwest of the Hamburg district of Harvestehude, on the border with Eimsbüttel. It was founded in 1910 as a state secondary school for girls and has been open to boys since 1969. As a UNESCO project school, Helene Lange High School maintains many international contacts, including Kiluvya Secondary School in Tanzania.

Meetings of the students with other young people from other cultural backgrounds enable them to get to know each other. It is precisely the contacts within the official city partnership between Hamburg and Dar es Salaam that enable a more comprehensive, more realistic view of the world.

The coeducational connection between the Helene Lange High School and state-run Kiluvya Secondary School in Dar es Salaam has existed since 2006. From the very beginning, the idea of meeting and getting to know each other was at the forefront of the association.

The possibilities of cooperation range from e-mail/letter friendships to the implementation of joint teaching projects to financial support or reciprocal visits. During mutual visits of student-teacher groups, insights into our respective school and personal everyday life could be taken.

The focus was not on financial aspects and aid considerations. An attempt is made to critically question common African stereotypes of a safari world with wild animals and a poor but happy life in the imagination. This succeeds when working together on a project and experiencing everyday life, for example in the host family, where ‘own’ is found in a ‘foreign’ environment.