Today’s society should prioritize addressing a community’s social emotional well-being and promoting the growth of an inclusive environment. The fluctuation of immigration in Germany requires individuals and communities to have conversations on how to understand and respond to the new cultures and identities that are contributing to the community. To address the importance of inclusive environments, we must tend to the social and emotional well-being of all individuals and groups in order to thrive. Our project team worked with Start With a Friend (SwaF), a Germany-based non-governmental organization (NGO) that focuses on creating a cohesive, diverse, and inclusive society for both locals and newcomers through a tandem partnership program and community events. By conducting interviews with various NGOs and analyzing their outreach material, we identified five main social-emotional components of a cohesive society: respect/tolerance, openness, cultural competency, trust, and empathy. We continued building on these components through research on the Flourishing Framework, TIME Framework and the Belonging Framework. Each framework takes a different approach to address the needs of an inclusive society by either focusing on community-based improvements or the personal growth of an individual. We utilized these findings to tailor our framework to both highlight components that address self-awareness and foster community belonging. These components and the various frameworks researched supported the development of the ROCTE belonging framework. We hope this framework can be incorporated into the methods used by various organizations and SwaF in their efforts to make their communities more inclusive and cohesive.

• This report represents the work of one or more WPI undergraduate students submitted to the faculty as evidence of completion of a degree requirement. WPI routinely publishes these reports on its website without editorial or peer review.

Creator

• Guo, Kitty
• Neves, Samuel
• Jayamoorthy, Ananya
• Robock, Patrick
• Ripa, Joana

Subject

• Learning
• Community
• Well-Being
• Inclusion
• Culture

Publisher

• Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Identifier

• 122086
• E-project-043024-044036

Keyword

• Community growth
• Social emotional well being
• Inclusion
• Integration
• Newcomers and locals
• Immigration

Advisor

• Mardilovich, Ivan P.
• Foo, Katherine

Year

• 2024

Center

• Berlin, Germany Project Center - IQP

Sponsor

• Jakob Filzen

UN Sustainable Development Goals

• 3 - Good Health and Well-being
• 10 - Reducing Inequality
• 11 - Sustainable Cities and Communities

Date created

• 4/30/2024

Resource type

• Interactive Qualifying Project

Source

• E-project-043024-044036

Rights statement

• In Copyright

License

• Creative Commons BY-NC Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International