Hostelling International Slovenia

We are a non-governmental organization with the aim of promoting peace through travel and cultural exchange. Our target group are young people, especially those who want to experience nature and foreign cultures through travel. We believe that this will lead to more understanding and therefore to a more peaceful world.

We are based in Maribor and run 30 youth hostels across Slovenia. The hostels are very different, but all of them target young people in particular. We explicitly see our hostels as meeting places for young people of different nationalities, skin colours, religions, genders, classes or political backgrounds. We promote the mobility of young people through local, regional, national, European and international projects and motivate them to strive for a different, educational way of travelling. We try to establish travel as a way of non-formal learning, whereby young people gain personal experience that contributes to their personal development. We also organize activities, projects and sustainability initiatives to help shape a better future for all of us.

We are also a part of the international HI Connect programme for volunteer and staff exchange. Together with other hostel organizations, we are creating opportunities for our volunteers and staff to increase their skills and competence on an international level. HI Connect was created by Hostelling International with the purpose of providing people with a unique opportunity to experience life and work in another country; to enhance life skills and confidence; to embrace the culture and environment of the host country; to enhance their ability to learn another language; to create new friendships and promote mobility of people across international boundaries.

We are especially proud of our monthly Globetrotter online magazine. The content is created by our volunteers who share their stories and adventures with our readers. It is sent to more than 11,000 e mail accounts all over the world and is daily visited by 2,000 people. Our readers can read travelogues, information about discounts, introductions to new hostels and so much more.

Our team

Anja Žepič

anja.zepic@youth-hostel.si

Anja is a mathematician, but mathematics is not her passion. She loves travelling, dancing, drawing, working with young people, being their mentor and helping them become better people. Concerned about what we will leave behind for our descendants, she is looking for ways to encourage youngsters to think critically, be more aware and more active in sustainability. But she is convinced that the first step is to work on yourself, so you can help others and the world. She started working at HI Slovenia as a student in 2002 and currently works there as vice president.

JANUN Hannover e.V.

Here at JANUN Hannover e.V., we have been active in Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) for over 30 years, especially in the sense of non-formal education and peer-to-peer learning. There are currently two active peer-to-peer teams that offer various workshops on the topics of climate change and sustainable consumption. As a rule, we conduct around 120–150 workshops for young people, mainly for school classes, in Hannover and the surrounding area every year. Two of these peer-to-peer educational projects have already been recognized by UNESCO.

We have been organizing international youth exchange programmes since 1994 and have carried out over 170 programmes together with partner organizations in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Norway, England, Greenland, Serbia, Turkey, North Macedonia, Italy, Palestine, Israel, the United States, Canada, and West Papua. This way, we dedicate ourselves intensively to the topics of travel, tourism, sustainable mobility, intercultural learning and international co-operation.

Through this, we have acquired a great deal of competence in the planning and implementation of sustainable youth travel over the years and have built up a large international network that should also benefit from the know-how of this project. At JANUN, we have already carried out several international educational projects. Achim Riemann, JANUN’s project manager, was also involved in the management of a seminar house (ideenHOF e.V.) for six years, which means that he is also familiar with the operation of group accommodation.

Our team

Achim Riemann

buero@janun-hannover.de

Achim organised his first international youth exchange when he was 19. Since then, he has been responsible for about 160 international youth projects. With ten years, he started his own first environmental club, with 18, he was one of the founders of JANUN, the organisation he has been working at for many years. He is the coordinator of local and international projects at JANUN where he is a full-time education consultant. He studied social work.

Jochen Dallmer

mail@jochendallmer.net

Jochen is a political scientist working freelance as a consultant, facilitator, speaker and lecturer. He did his PhD on the topic of “Happiness and Sustainability”, looking for a world that is more sustainable and a better place to live in. He is passionate about education and sustainability, and he loves to travel. For more information about Jochen please visit his webpage www.jochendallmer.net.