FGYO

Created in 1963, the Franco-German Youth Office (OFAJ) is an international organisation which aims to strengthen German-French cooperation in the youth area. OFAJ’s staff consists of 106 employees (including 70 full-time jobs).

OFAJ main objectives

• promote intercultural learning and develop the intercultural pedagogy
• increase language awareness and learning
• improve the employability of young people
• share best practices to third countries (Central and South-Eastern Europe, Mediterranean area).

The OFAJ supports youth projects such as youth and student exchanges (secondary schools and universities), language courses, internship programmes.

OFAJ target groups are very large: from the age of 3 to 30. Projects address to kindergartners, pupils, students apprentices (vocational training) and young unemployed persons.

Projects focus on common issues in both countries and current needs of young people. It is a unique “laboratory” for transnational projects and European cooperation.

Intercultural training department – linguistic training department

This department aims to promote learning of French and German languages and support language awareness and acquisition by children and young people. In the past 50 years the department for linguistic training of OFAJ was constantly developing approaches and methods to increase language awareness and communications skills in both languages, adapted to different target groups and contexts, especially for non-formal education. For example, it was pioneer of the tandem approach which is now well known in a lot of academic situations.