The voluntary ecological year in Germany (abbreviated FÖJ) is an educational and orientation year for teenagers and young adults of ages 16 through 27. The FÖJ can be attended only once and usually lasts 12 months (from 1 September to 31 August of the following year). This service was accepted as an alternative service to military service during the period of conscription until 2011 and universities accept it as a semester on leave.
The service is financed and realized by the federal states and some agencies. The agencies also organize 5 seminars per year which must be attended by the participant. Apart from that, the participants have to be self organized.
Famous quotes containing the words voluntary, ecological and/or year:
“Men are not therefore put to death, or punished for that their theft proceedeth from election; but because it was noxious and contrary to men’s preservation, and the punishment conducing to the preservation of the rest, inasmuch as to punish those that do voluntary hurt, and none else, frameth and maketh men’s wills such as men would have them.”
—Thomas Hobbes (1579–1688)
“It seems to me that there must be an ecological limit to the number of paper pushers the earth can sustain, and that human civilization will collapse when the number of, say, tax lawyers exceeds the world’s total population of farmers, weavers, fisherpersons, and pediatric nurses.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)
“The golden mean in ethics, as in physics, is the centre of the system and that about which all revolve, and though to a distant and plodding planet it be an uttermost extreme, yet one day, when that planet’s year is completed, it will be found to be central.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)