Activities and Highlights

In 2026, numerous UNESCO project schools across Germany once again participated with great enthusiasm in the international initiative “Gift a Poem”. Around the World Poetry Day on March 21, students sent a powerful message of creativity, empathy, and active multilingualism—fully in line with UNESCO’s educational goals.

Students from various school types created handwritten, lovingly crafted poems that were specifically given as gifts to bring joy to others. The initiative included a wide range of activities. For example, at the Goethe-Gymnasium in Sebnitz, several classes from the 5th , 6th and 7th grades wrote their own poems or took well-known folk songs and poems and creatively reworked them. The spring greetings were intended for seniors at a local day care center and were meant to convey cheerfulness and a sense of closeness just in time for Easter.

With the intention of writing poems to bring joy to people in challenging life situations, the Hainberg-Gymnasium in Göttingen once again took part in the “Gift a Poem” initiative. A UNESCO course of the 8th grade personally delivered their poems to a hospice, where the encounter was experienced as particularly moving and enriching.

At the Edith-Stein-Schule, the focus was on addressing the recipients personally: In their poetry class, the students thought about whom they could bring special joy to with a poem. Tailoring their choices to each recipient, they selected texts in German or English, wrote them by hand on colourful paper, and decorated them individually. The deliberate use of both languages allowed students to experience poetry as a unifying element that transcends linguistic boundaries.

The Staatliche Regelschule “Georg Kresse” likewise focused on the bilingual creation of original poems in German and English as a central element of its contribution. Designed with spring-inspired motifs, the poems were presented to the public during the school’s open house. Through their recitation and subsequent gifting—including to prospective pupils—language became vividly tangible as an expression of welcome, solidarity, and hope.

The contributions from UNESCO ASPnet schools powerfully demonstrate how poetry empowers young people to act creatively, empathetically, and multilingually—and how language can serve as a bridge between generations and communities.

 

Schools involved

  • Edith-Stein-Schule, Ravensburg & Aulendorf

  • Staatliche Regelschule “Georg Kresse”, Triebes

  • Goethe-Gymnasium, Sebnitz

  • Hainberg-Gymnasium, Göttingen