As of January 2024
Everyone deserves to be respected in their individuality and honored with their achievements. Accordingly, (especially) adolescents and young adults who find it difficult in school, family and society to try out, exchange and share successes with others are liked. It is important to us to always create an appreciative atmosphere with mutual respect. The aim of the association is also, without high material expenditure, to create a tangible result together with the visitors and thus to open up an opportunity to experience success through active and constructive design. The association creates a safe space that has little impact on (digital media) consumption and thus offers space for exchange and creativity. What the young people want to try is communicated. Active participation begins with the planning of offers and projects and sometimes ends in years of partnership in the voluntary service. Girls/boys and also queer people experience themselves as active creators and are not judged or excluded because of their appearance, gender, educational level, financial background or origin. The association also offers parents the possibility of value-free counselling, practical life help or placement to other professions according to individual needs. The association is committed to the idea of self-realization and open exchange of ideas in the Christian humanist tradition. He makes it his mission to accompany children, young people and parents and to provide qualified contact persons. As a working basis, a resource-oriented and appreciative attitude of the employees is expected and lived. Projects that do not pursue racist and sexist content or undermine individual rights will be carried out. Accordingly, the carrier feels obliged to comply with the protection order for children and young people, in accordance with Section 8a and Section 72a of the SGB VIII. Creativity, pluralism and participation are encouraged and are expressly desired. The employees and volunteers see themselves as companions of young people in life situations and old ages who are perceived by them and their caregivers as problematic.
The principle is:
The living and socialization space District of Goerlitz strengthens the self-determined development of children, young people and families. Mothers and fathers should take responsibility with their children for shaping the future of the region and thereby identify themselves with their homeland. They use the opportunity to shape the border area in the spirit of an open European society. Supporters of Youth Aid actively support community work in the district and create a space for children, young people and their families for communication and exchange. You will experience in an exemplary way how everyone can influence offers in order to jointly create a living space that allows openness and tolerance. This common place also provides space for experiences and exchanges with people from other regions or states. Interreg programmes are used to support democracy education. Family hikes in the Giant Mountains of the Czech Republic, ski holidays in the Jizera Mountains of Poland, youth exchanges with Polish and Ukrainian project participants or the biennial “Kinder sto – unser Stadt”, in which the association is always extensively involved in organizing, are just a few examples of localization in a modern Europe. The exploration of the home region during climbing tours in the Zittau Mountains and in the Kignshain Mountains are among the constant offers, which are not only enjoyed by young visitors but also by families.
The association supports numerous public events in the community through activities for children, young people and the whole family. By involving youth visitors, youth volunteers or non-profit workers, young people are enabled to use and demonstrate their skills in and for the community. The association is also an internship centre for educators, students of the technical high school at BSZ Goerlitz and social workers in training to inspire young professionals to stay in their home region. In addition, young offenders can do community service. You will be guided by a professional. The aim of the bearer, however, is not only to make amends, but also to regain a fixed daily structure and the idea of integration into a community that does not aim solely at consumption or consuming substitutes.
As in the first years of the children’s and youth centre, regular weekly offers have been on the programme since mid-2015 in order to counter the fast-paced time with something predictable. The previously primarily explicit projects are now offered during the holidays in the form of thematic youth trips, which promote awareness of history, responsibility for democratic conditions, etc. These trips should not only serve as a holiday offer of recreation, but also follow a theme and have an educational effect. Meetings are often designed so that German participants come into contact with Polish and Ukrainian youth. Through an intercultural exchange, the young people from Goerlitz succeed in locating themselves in their homeland and gaining a new sense of home. With the above mentioned offers, the association wants to strengthen the attractiveness of the region.
Situation in the planning area Görlitz
Görlitz, as the largest municipality with the densest population in the county, has the highest percentage of unemployed adults in the whole of Saxony, which means that a large number of children live in precarious conditions. The high number of support students and the lower proportion of high school students could correlate with this circumstance and attest to the city having a higher proportion of adults who are out of education than in the surrounding area. The proportion of unemployed and untrained adolescents is higher compared to other planning areas. Likewise, the number of delinquent youths and adolescents in Görlitz is higher than the county average1. This fact could also be linked to the provision of help by parents. Ultimately, children, adolescents, adolescents and young adults are affected by higher levels of social disadvantage than in other cities in Saxony. They learn early on about lack of education, culture, club sports and material resources. There are therefore various institutions in the city which, in addition to open preventive work, increasingly devote themselves to parent education. There are contacts with these associations to enable children to transition into the youth centre, but also to introduce younger siblings of our visitors to the offers.
In addition to the thirty years of preventive open youth work, in the last five years another important area of responsibility has emerged with the formation of the family. Our pedagogical work aims to promote and support educators in the performance and management of their family tasks. This is done through individual counselling in the family café, concrete discussions with parents in a protected setting and through low-threshold offers, such as family leisure time. Our family-building services are disseminated through networks of the local family formation in the youth office, via social media or personal contacts among the families.
The mobile youth work is on the go in Gérlitzer Platz to provide young people with contact points and offers of help. School refuser projects in Goerlitz enable children and young people to (re)enter school and education. There, young people who have dropped out of one or more apprenticeships are also given another chance to obtain the basics of vocational training.
Across all our services, there is a growing need for support services as many young people and their families are exposed to multiple stressful situations. Support can be achieved through a resource-oriented approach.
Our association sees the revitalization of the district by the Rabryka as an enrichment and not as a competition. The target group of the Sociocultural Center are young adults who come mostly from non-educational backgrounds.The establishment of the Sociocultural Center not only enlivens the socio-cultural landscape of Goerlitz, but also enriches the district.
The new migration situations since 2015 by mainly Arab, Afghan and Ukrainian families, not to mention by the many new Polish families, have resulted in a new starting point for open child and youth work. New languages, cultures and backgrounds for moving away from their homeland create complex demands on clubs and staff. This makes offers more diverse and active. They also become more specific, for example, to accompany children with war trauma. Integration projects are created, tutoring with a focus on German and specific support for parents whose mother tongue is not German.
- vgl. https://www.kreis-goerlitz.de/city_info/display/dokument/show.cfm?region_id=349&id=424618 S.41 (24.01.2024)1 ↩︎