Mission Statement: Promotion of Young Talents

Our target groups in the promotion of young talent

  • We promote those studying and graduating who have a positive attitude towards the goals of the Green project, share the fundamental ideals of the Heinrich Böll Foundation – democracy, ecology, solidarity and non-violence – and who take an active socio-political role.
  • We promote those studying at and graduating from all faculties and all types of higher education. In addition to our current focus on Humanities and Social Science as well as Fine Arts and Cultural Studies, we will, in the future, be extending our scholarship to as yet under-represented specialist subjects such as Economics, Law, Engineering, Media Science and Natural Science.
  • We expect the applicants to have excellent credits and display an exceptional interest in academic cognisance.
  • We particularly welcome debate with critical science and a connection between theory and practice, openness to unconventional and interdisciplinary research issues, open-mindedness with respect to innovative research methods and an interest in issues relating to higher education, educational policy and science policy.
  • Our scholarship policy combines performance mentality and equal opportunities. This is particularly expressed, among other things, in the extraordinarily high proportion of female students and graduates who are part of the scholarship programme. We especially support young women in those subjects where, to date, they have been under-represented. In addition, we particularly welcome applications from students with a migration background.
  • We promote students and graduates from all German Länder; in the process, it is our sincere interest that the proportion of scholarship holders from East Germany will increase.
  • We support life-long learning; applicants with work experience or a second-chance education are very welcome.
  • We promote scholarship holders from around the world. Alongside applicants from Germany, we especially support young people from countries in the South as well as from Eastern Europe.

Promotion of young talent as a means of promoting personalities

  • We support young people in their professional and personal development.
  • We are looking for personalities who
          - are politically active and interested in politics and who support Green ideas;
          - are curious, reflective, original and intellectually independent;
          - show team spirit, are communicative, constructive, show an ability to resolve conflicts and are solution-orientated;
          - are goal-orientated and ambitious in their planning for the future;
          - are (self-) reflective and (self-) critical;
          - have social ideals and display both gender-democratic and intercultural competence;
          - are internationally oriented.
  • We support work correlations where individuality, aptitude and social competence combine.
  • We offer room for creative thinking and an exchange of political ideas as part of a stimulating and inspiring discussion culture characterised by mutual respect and fair treatment of one another.

Our principles of promotion

  • We perceive the promotion of young talent to be a contribution towards promoting a democratic culture.
  • We create forums for discussion and work correlations between students, young scientists and academics, former scholarship holders, moulded scientists and academics as well as Green politicians. We promote the development of Green networks at national, European and international level.
  • Our forms of promotion are both material (scholarship, book money, supplement for stays abroad) and non-material (supporting programme, networking,
    consultancy).
  • We set particularly great store by gender-democratic and intercultural issues as part of our non-material promotion.
  • We underscore the spirit of participation and afford our scholarship holders the relevant means of co-determination. We expect co-operation with our scholarship holders to be constructive, solution-orientated and goal-orientated, and nurture a corresponding culture of communication among them. 

Networking former scholarship holders / alumni programme

  • We offer our alumni a manifold programme, assist in alumni getting in touch with one another, and provide a communication platform for them to network on their own.
  • We encourage our scholarship holders, once they have completed their scholarship, to actively campaign for the principles of hbs as experts and executives working in the fields of science, politics, the media, business and economics and society.
  • We welcome former scholarship holders lending their assistance as idealist and material promoters of the foundation.