DOPDA - Rethinking life support

"DOPDA" comes from Korean and means: Help / Support. It is intended to express the core of our project: “Accompany and positively influence people on their way of life”.

Our drive - the social problem
Throughout their lives, people experience situations which have a positive or negative effect on their future. These events can significantly impact and put at risk the positive development of individuals and thereby restrict their rights granted under Article 3 of the UN Declaration on Human Rights: "Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person."
Children, adolescents, adults and the elderly are therefore threatened with a life of fear and insecurity, as there is no program that fundamentally supports and builds up the physical, social and mental basis of life. We want to change this.

Example depressions
Depression can hit anyone. Possible triggers are so diverse, but can often be limited to a psychological or social cause. Examples may be: a perceived helplessness against a negative experience or permanent overload. With DOPDA, we have a program that can help widely by working on physical appearance, mental self-assurance and social security.

What exactly is DOPDA
The core of DOPDA will be a multidisciplinary curriculum and method set on the basis of which we will train course leaders (martial arts teachers, educators & psychologists). Through quality management and an expert council, we will ensure the high-quality and effective implementation and continuous development of DOPDA. Furthermore, a network of financial supporters, organized by us, should ensure that the participants are able to take part in the courses irrespective of their financial resources. We want to help those who are not able help themselves or who fall through the cracks.

Further information can be found on www.dopda.de (unfortunately currently only in German available - we are working on a english version)

In DOPDA we see the potential that the participants acquire methods, competences and information at an early stage irrespective of their age, cultural background or financial resources, to be able to build up long-term resistance resources for a self-determined life.

Therefore, we would like to offer free access to DOPDA to so many people (children, young people, refugees, at risk groups such as burnout dangers etc.). It is our aim that health-promoting self-assured behavior will be embraced in a way that it will become a self-evident part of the way of life. Furthermore, the aim is to ensure that course participants are protected against physical and psychological attacks, which goes far beyond pure self-defense.

Target groups
With adequate resources we want DOPDA interpret from the outset to different target groups. The course instructors can thus achieve the maximum effect through our training, quality assurance and ongoing development and further trainings.

For 2017
With your help we want to start in 2017 with the target group of children and young people in asylums and socially weak areas and gradually open up for further target groups. We will enable 150 people to participate in our courses free of charge.

Basically, an unfavorable negative life incident can happen to anyone among us. This can be bullying, the loss of an important person, a physical or mental burnout through overwork or even extreme situations like a violent or sexual assault. With your support you help actively by enabling us to offer in 2017 courses for those who are otherwise not able to afford such offerings.

Those people, caring a high risk of getting negative life experiences and thus for getting depressions. For those who are often not able to afford such programs, we want to offer the lasting and free of charge DOPDA courses.

You can become part of it by supporting us here on Startnext. Donate a course for one participant, donate the initial equipment for a participant, enable us to take an entire course and decide with whom we hold it. We invite you to participate not only with a donation or a sponsoring, but we are glad about every active cooperation and every suggestion that you give us.

If you are a trainer or an instructor and you are interested in working with DOPDA, we would like to invite you to an exchange of experiences and active participation (for example at our symposium).

With successful financing, we will start in spring/summer 2017 with our first free of charge DOPDA courses. The extent to which we can make this depends on the level of funding. Our goal is to enable at least 150 people to participate in our courses free of charge in 2017.

The full costs for one participant will be 150, - €. This includes all relevant costs: basic equipment for the course instructors, materials for the participants, organization in the background and on-site implementation.

Our curriculum, the contents of the units, has been build modular so we can adapt it to the target group and its context at any time. There will be a prevention course, which will take more than half a year, but we will also offer short courses on specific topics such as self-defense, self-efficacy, team building, civil courage, relationships, mentors and role models and courses which will be adapted to the participants needs.
The funding threshold represents the minimum resources we need to offer a course in the Rhine-Neckar area. Since our goal is to allow at least 150 people the free participation in our courses in 2017, we set the target of our Crowdfunding at € 22,500.

We are currently planning a larger project with corresponding fundraising ambitions, with which we can reach more than 700 participants in the coming 3 years. This will be made possible through a dedicated training system with appropriate quality assurance and ongoing further development of the program.