What does saving up mean ?

To do things takes money. To change things we need to be together.

Economy normally separates people. Each person has his or her economy, and his or her economical possibilities – or maybe lack of economical possibilities. When we have common economy we organise together about economical solutions for the things we want to do. In this way we gain the freedom to do things we could not do alone. Alone you can save up for example a stereo. When we are 30 we can save up for 3 buses, 9 driver’s licences, a house to live in etc. The DNS education is for everybody, not just for people with money, so we help each other by having common responsibility for the earnings as well as for the spending. It also means if one person has a low wage and another person has a high wage, they can both still afford the education and are equal.

During the 3 years at DNS we earn the money together and we spend the money together – we have common economy.

Each person brings an initial amount to the common economy to cover the expenses for the first year when he/she arrives. Some might participate in a commonly organised saving up period to raise this money. Here after we cover all expenses through educationally integrated income activities.

People who cannot earn enough money for their education in their homecountries, can apply for joining the saving-up group. As anywhere else the students have to find jobs in all kind of areas, but together they can often find more solutions. Sometimes the school centre can offer positions in care homes or the saving up group gets the responsibility for a maintenance job in one of the Tvind schools.  

There is a long saving up period before the program starts, often starting in January until September, some people even arrive one year before they start the program to take on one of the few available positions in DNS. Then they work in our promotion office and part time with our Carehome for adults. According to the amount someone can raise themself before arrival we make a saving up plan together and see when a person can start to save up in Denmark. Later on during the education shorter saving up periods are part of the program, the whole group earns the money needed to cover all their expenses.