Germans make refugees feel at home with buddy schemes, cooking and sport

When asylum seeker Fouad Nour Aldin from Gaza arrived in Germany a year ago, he used to spend all day brooding inside his shelter -- until a scheme hooked him up with German buddies.

The 41-year-old Palestinian, a former bus driver, is one of more than a million migrants who arrived in Germany last year. Like many others, he initially struggled to communicate, knew little about German life and had hardly any contact with locals.

“We don’t have any plans and our days are long and boring and if you just sit there thinking you can get stressed,” he said. “If you can find a way to get outside, it’s very good.”

As authorities scramble to provide housing and social benefits, newcomers often have to wait months for a government-sponsored integration course. So many Germans, increasingly battling a swelling tide of anti-migrant feeling, are taking social integration into their own hands.

An array of bottom-up initiatives draw refugees and migrants into local communities via cooking, gardening, sports, yoga, mentoring programmes and coffee afternoons. Most focus on helping people who have fled their homes. A recent survey by the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD) found around 11 percent of Germans were helping refugees. In Berlin alone, more than 150 initiatives are dedicated to doing so. But the volunteers, and the refugees, are facing growing suspicion. Almost half of Germans fear too many refugees are coming, a recent survey by pollster Emnid showed. Support for the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD), which talks tough on immigration, has surged into double-digits.

Failure to integrate the new arrivals could fuel right-wing parties and erode support for taking additional refugees, said Ruud Koopmans, director of integration research at the WZB Berlin Social Science Centre, a situation he said would be “social and political catastrophe”.