Six Rooms, Eight Themes, One Faith
Vibrant orange, Bordeaux red, delicate light green or even strong turquoise: the colours are the first thing that catches the eye when you enter the upper floor of the Ludwig-Harms-Haus.
They exhibit a magical attraction and invite you to leave the passageway to discover rooms that are not only colourful, but also thematic. The visitor enters an office, a living room, a classroom. On closer inspection, the themes that the Evangelical Lutheran Mission in Lower Saxony (ELM) has made its main focus are hidden here: poverty, advocacy, education, gender, global cultural diversity, church development, spirituality and peace.
What does poverty feel like? A simple bed, a worn blanket and an old cooker, all in six square metres, give an idea of how people live in many places around the world. Anyone who dares to open the oven or pull open a few kitchen drawers will learn even more. For example, that even in supposedly "poor" countries there is affordable green electricity for the population: Albania, Bhutan and Paraguay are pioneers in this field.
A few metres further on, in the next room, you can learn something about education programs. Today, education is no longer just about "formal learning" in institutions such as schools. Just as important are the experiences we have every day through our everyday activities or hobbies - learning by doing or lifelong learning - though the right to education is denied to many people around the world. With its projects, the ELM is helping to change this.
From the six colourful themed rooms dedicated to the ELM's main areas of focus, the corridor opens up into a larger room, which at first glance does not seem to have much in common with a missionary organisation. The focus here is on the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). What do people need in order to lead a good life and to enable future generations to do the same? The Bible, as the Holy Scripture of Christianity, provides answers to this question, but so does an institution in which 193 countries have joined forces to minimise wars and crises and enforce human rights: The United Nations.
The Evangelical Lutheran Mission in Lower Saxony identifies with these goals; this is reflected in the projects of its worldwide partner churches, which the ELM is able to support financially because of donations. The SDGs can be explored in a playful way in the exhibition. Six large touchscreens invite visitors to delve deeper into the "how" and
"why", because experience shows that it only gets exciting when nice-sounding goals are put into practice.
In which parts of the world are there partner churches of the Evangelical Lutheran Mission in Lower Saxony, how do the people there live, what experiences do they have with church and faith? Visitors will find out as the exhibition progresses.
In between, quiet zones invite visitors to let what they have seen and heard sink in.
The "Room of Silence" is one such place, but also the last station of the Friedensort2GO, which is located in the exhibition. The so-called F2GO is a 4-kilometre pilgrimage through Hermannsburg, which begins at the ELM administration building on Georg-Haccius-Straße and ends at the Ludwig-Harms-Haus. At six stations, pilgrims receive inspiration on the topic of peace.
