A young volunteer making the world better

Samantha Owusu (20) volunteers at schools
for an exemplary environmental project

Ch. v. Savigny, Lurup

Of all the things Samantha Owusu talks about, one sentence sticks in the memory in particular: “I love taking on responsibility,” says the 20-year-old from Lurup, who is currently completing a voluntary social year (FSJ) at a school in Bahrenfeld. Anyone who listens to her believes it immediately: the young German-Ghanaian is simply bursting with ideas on how to make the world a better place. And radiates an unshakeable optimism while doing so.
Recently, Owusu set up a few so-called deposit boxes at the Stadtteilschule (STS) Lurup – the school where she took her Abitur last year. At the boxes, pupils can get rid of their old (deposit) plastic bottles. The proceeds of the collection campaign go to charitable clubs (see text on the right). The nationwide project is called “Spende Dein Pfand”, and its national coordinator is Samantha Owusu. “If everyone makes a small contribution, we can change something,” she says.
Even during her school days, the young woman from Lurup always wanted to be involved, and accordingly her classmates frequently elected her class representative or even school representative. She volunteered as a babysitter for the neighbours and as a church service helper at the “Lighthouse Chapel International”, a Christian congregation in Lurup.
As a scholarship holder of the Hertie Foundation, she took part in a “summer camp” for young people after her Abitur and got to know “Spende Dein Pfand”. “I realised that I had not perceived my daily activities as volunteering at all, but as something perfectly natural,” she notes in retrospect.
As a German with African roots, her career goal was quickly clear: “The Federal Foreign Office or something to do with diplomacy would appeal to me,” Owusu reports. Foreign countries, other cultures – that is what fascinates the 20-year-old. On the current refugee situation in Germany she says: “It could happen to anyone. If I myself were a refugee in another country, I would also want to be treated fairly and decently.”

The deposit project
The initiative “Spende dein Pfand – Jugend bewegt” was founded in Cologne in 2014. By now, dozens of schools, companies and communities all over Germany are taking part. At present, 17 pupils across Germany are volunteering as coordinators for the project. The STS Lurup – Vorhornweg site – is the second participating Hamburg school after the STS Bahrenfeld.
The principle: pupils and teachers throw their no longer needed deposit bottles into the empties boxes provided, and the proceeds go to charitable and social organisations. Among those supported are the Kinderrechteforum (KRF), the environmental protection organisation “Robin Wood” and “Friedensdorf International”. Despite proceeds of 25 cents per PET bottle, around 50 million deposit bottles end up in residual waste or in nature every year across Germany.