Hello Industry Partners, my name is Steven Seewald, the president and representative of the Vancouver Westside German School. Thank you in advance for taking an interest in our School.
The Vancouver Westside German School has provided exceptional education to students in our K-12 classes since 1992. Our school is becoming 30 years old this year! Over the last 30 years we have maintained a deep commitment to our students to promote the German language and culture.
Our school focuses on our children to give them the tools to successfully complete the A1 and A2 evaluations, and DSD I and DSD II exams. Both DSD I and DSD II exams are internationally recognized and the DSD II as a language proficiency credit for admission to any German, Austrian and Swiss University. Here at home, it is recognized as Four external High School Language credits.
Pre COVID the VWGS was taught in the Prince of Wales Secondary School in Vancouver. During COVID we have successfully maintained approximately 150 students in both 2020 and 2021 in online teaching and we have also expanded to North Vancouver.
Our School is largely funded by a grant that is provided by the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG). Without this grant, our school would be prohibitively expensive to operate. The condition of this grant is to have a minimum of 6 DSD II students successfully complete the exam every year. As you can imagine with COVID looming and online classes, it has been difficult to keep students engaged to successfully complete the challenging DSD II exam.
Regrettably our DSD II graduations have dropped below the FRG’s requirements and thus the FRG greatly reduced our funding, putting the school in peril.
We hope that our Industry Partners could support us during these trying times. Our school is willing to provide you with recognition on our website and newsletters for your sponsorship or charitable donation. We are offering recognition for Gold, Silver, and Bronze gifts at a value of $10,000, $4,000, and $1,000 respectfully.
Additionally, we are seeking a community sponsorship or donations for our new scholarship program to support students who graduate from the DSD II exam (Grade 11 to12 level)
Thank you very much for your time and I would be happy to answer any questions. Please contact me directly at 604 723 1766 or email donations@vwgs.org.
Sincerely, Steven Seewald, AScT, CRSP, EP, PTech, P.L.Eng
President
Donation # 892008244RP0001
Message from Hans Stocker, the Deputy Consul of the Federal Republic of Germany
Dear members of the German business community,
I address you today on behalf of the Consulate General of the Federal Republic of Germany to kindly draw your attention to Vancouver Westside German School’s funding request, which we wholeheartedly support.
VWGS has provided high-class courses for German for three decades. In doing so the school not only promotes our language and culture. It also broadens its students‘ minds and strongly contributes to their overall education, thus making them more interesting and valuable esp. for the German business community as future employees.
In short: a functioning German School without doubt is beneficial for the German business community.
Rather surprisingly also for us, the funds from the German government which the School heavily relies on had to be drastically cut this year. In our communication with the responsible government entity we did not – unfortunately – succeed to convince them to make an exception and continue to contribute to the School’s expenses in the same amount as in previous years. Pandemic-related reasons for the decline in the amount of successful DSD II exams were not acknowledged. If I got the communication right, though, they plan to overhaul their regulations, hopefully to make them more flexible esp. in cases like VWGS.
For the time being we deem it essential that the School can continue to operate. We would therefore very much appreciate if you would find a way to support Vancouver Westside German School via your company.
About the German School:
We offer a widely recognized high quality K-12 German after-school language program. Ideally students join our program at the age of 5 or 6 and progress on to high school. We teach German as a foreign language and German as a second language. To that end, we stream our students throughout the entire program into a second language stream and a foreign language stream. Our program reflects a variety of language levels including German language introduction in Kindergarten, progression at the elementary level, exam classes for external high school credits, and the German language diploma, which is a language proficiency requirement for admission to any German, Austrian and Swiss university. Students learn German with us once a week after regular school hours.
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