… and a hearty “Willkommen” to our Winter 2018 Newsletter!

Thanksgiving has come and gone, and we have much to be thankful for this year. 30 wonderful AYF students have joined us in Freiburg for their adventure in international education, and both alumni club chapters are as engaged, supportive, and active as ever. The first four scholarships for AYF participants will be issued in 2019-20! And we are profoundly grateful to the JY cohort of 1984-85 for establishing the Gentry Scholarship Fund.

The Francis G. and Edda Gentry Fund is an endowed fund under the auspices of our American alumni club chapter (AYF Alumni Association, Inc.) dedicated to supporting future AYF participants. Tom Brustar, Treasurer of the American club chapter reports on the Gentry Fund’s establishment and on the honorees, Frank and Edda Gentry, below. This is a most wonderful example of the long-lasting, truly life-changing impact of the program.

We are equally grateful to the members of the Freiburg-based German chapter (AYF Alumni & Friends) for supporting the alumni club scholarship program with two scholarships and for their tireless efforts to organize Stammtisch and other events to make our students feel at home and create forums for exchange across JY and AYF generations.

Such scholarship efforts would not be possible without our alumni. YOUR support for the club makes a great difference in the lives of our students, and we thank you for it! The 2017-18 membership drive was a great success. The US chapter added about 40 members and about 25 joined the German chapter. A special “Thank you!” goes to Erik Kirschbaum (82-83) for his generous membership drive Matching Fund which can now fully be dedicated to scholarship support. If you have been thinking about joining, now is a wonderful time to do so and to build on the momentum the AYF Alumni Club has achieved!

In other news, we’d like to:
• present our current AYF group and share some pictures of fall highlights;
• introduce the Alumni Profiles Project, a project for which we need your help;
• highlight “Fernweh and Home”, a German-American podcast produced by two recent AYF alumns;
• invite you to an AYF Alumni lunch in January 2019 in Berlin;
• preview an upcoming Freiburg Reunion.

Finally, we are very excited to feature an interview with Dirk von Schneidemesser (04-05) in this newsletter issue. With his civic organization Changing Cities e.V., Dirk was instrumental in helping change bicycle culture in Berlin and in establishing a model for effecting similar changes across Germany. Read all about Volksentscheid Fahrrad (VEF), or Berlin’s Bicycle Referendum, below.

We are pleased to send you this AYF Newsletter. Two, three times a year, we would like to reach out to all our alumni who studied at the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität under the auspices of the Junior Year in Freiburg and the Academic Year in Freiburg. You can help us by spreading the word and liberally forwarding the newsletter to other JYF and AYF Alumni. We’d love to hear from you! And please stop by and visit when your travels bring you back to Freiburg!

With cordial best wishes,

Kerstin Barndt, Resident Director 2018-19
Ulrich (Ulli) Struve, Program Director

Additional Contact information

Alumni Club website – this is the joint landing page for both chapters, for the AYF Alumni Association (US chapter) and for AYF Alumni & Friends (German chapter)

Online form for newsletter signup and updating your contact information

AYF Alumni Facebook Group

JYF Alumni Facebook Group