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Many kids of our own generation were pioneers: finally we had free higher education for everybody, boys and girls were off to the universities and in further consequence also off to foreign countries. Sensational! The previous generations had mothers who had been nowhere so far and fathers who had perhaps seen places during military service. But not much more.
And now many of us learned: No better way to get to know your own home, your nation and your way of thinking than to leave it for a while. Distance creates new perspectives, it helps to see more clearly and to understand better !
However, the hurdles to do just that were substantial. Money was sparse, language skills depended exclusively on what the schools had to offer and parental tolerance for the risk and danger of venturing abroad was often enough minimal.
For all those who did it anyway, perhaps as backpackers and hitchhikers, frequently as (perhaps not quite legal) workers on farms, in pubs and in factories, life changed forever. Self-pity is never a decent solution and they quickly learned to fend for themselves, along the way they picked up self-reliance, the art of improvising, a sharpened perception of chances and dangers.
For the twelve founding members of ParentalPal.Org this describes an essential part of their own journey to adulthood. Today ten are parents themselves (two want to be and surely will be when their time comes), nine have finished university successfully despite their parents’ concern about their ventures. Personal experience and the understanding of their peers’ life stories (the “ones that stayed behind ...”) - have resulted in their conclusion:
They want to pass on to their own children the “triangle of insight” by giving them maximum access to these three crucial ingredients ... a sound and profound education, a multicultural and international spectrum of experience, human warmth with strong values.
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