The Student Initiative Initiative Deutschkurse für Asylsuchende (IDA) at TUD has been selected as one of the first three winners of the Preis des Bundesministeriums für Bildung und Forschung für herausragende studentische Initiativen im Programm Welcome – Studierende engagieren sich für Flüchtlinge. Which of the three first places IDA will receive will be announced at the award ceremony on 5 July 2017 in Berlin.

IDA (https://initiative-deutschkurse.de/de/) emerged from a student group that voluntarily organised language courses and ABC tables for refugees in the initial reception facilities on the TU Dresden campus from September 2015 to April 2016. In the meantime, the initiative mediates and coordinates a variety of voluntary offers of help from students for refugees and develops structures that contribute to the integration of refugees and to intercultural exchange between refugees and students. IDA has been funded since April 2016 by the DAAD in the programme „Welcome – Studierende engagieren sich für Flüchtlinge“ and by the "Studentenstiftung Dresden".

Among the important project components is the sponsorship programme "Buddy-Programm“, which brings together refugee students and refugees capable of studying with students at Dresden universities. The sub-project „ABC-Tische von Geflüchteten für Studierende“ enables refugees to teach students at the TUD (and other universities) basic knowledge of their languages and cultures of origin and thus become active in the sense of a mutual exchange. Finally, IDA provides accompanying offers for learning the German language for refugees in various forms of mediation with volunteer student teachers.

IDA is supported by the International Office of the TUD (administration), the Centre for Integration Studies of the TUD (coordination) as well as by committed staff of the Faculty of Languages, Literature and Cultural Studies.