In March 2016, Frauke Janßen from Pforzheim started a programme with her family to support refugees from Syria and the Middle East. The Janßen families’ hometown of Pforzheim, Baden-Württemberg, a small city with 125,000 inhabitants, has taken in more than 5,000 refugees from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq since 2014. Half of them were women. Most of them had not yet been given the opportunity to attend a language course locally because they had to look after their young children at home and language course places with childcare were virtually non-existent.

GoldenHearts wanted to give these women the opportunity for the first time to integrate into German society as quickly as possible and to build a new life for themselves and their families. Learning the local language was the first step on the long road to integration.
With Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, another wave of refugees arrived in Pforzheim after 24 February 2022. More than 4,000, mostly women and children, were registered in Pforzheim and the Enzkreis by summer 22. GoldenHearts has been instrumental in arranging housing and has organised a variety of recreational and language programmes for the refugees. In the 2022/23 school year, GoldenHearts is helping over 300 women and their more than 360 children to learn the German language and find their way around locally.

Since GoldenHearts was founded in 2016, more than 1,500 women and children have now benefited from GoldenHearts programmes.

You too can help mothers and children with a migration background to build a new home in Germany.