In Germany, 23 million people over the age of 14 volunteer in associations, clubs, citizens’ initiatives, and churches.
Cologne, for example, boasts some 200,000 citizens doing volunteer work. This commitment is indispensable for the city, but it also contributes to making life in Cologne more friendly, communal, and liveable. In its original sense, being a volunteer means holding an honourable and voluntary public office that is uncompensated. Volunteers normally perform work for a set period of time for associations, citizens’ initiatives, or institutions; in some cases, they can be obligated to do so. Today, “volunteerism” is increasingly being used as an equivalent to such terms as “charity work” and “civic commitment”.
www.spielplatzpaten.com
In the city of Mettmann, the local “Playground Patrons” citizens’ initiative – civic commitment for making public play spaces more friendly for children and families – began in June 2009 with a clean-up action. It was initiated by Nicola Hengst-Gohlke, whose then two-year-old son was playing at a filthy playground. She asked herself the logical question as to who was really in charge of taking care of local playgrounds. “During my initial discussions with the responsible employee in the city administration, I learned that the city council had decided to eliminate a position in this area for cost-saving reasons,” said Hengst-Gohlke. This meant that there was a need for action, and the city indicated that it was open to getting citizens involved.
After several more rounds of discussions, which also included another committed mother who was head of her son’s former play group, the volunteer “Playground Patrons for Mettmann” citizens’ initiative was established. Nearly three years later, this group has picked up a considerable head of steam: More than 30 playground patrons, including three associations and a company, look after playgrounds on a volunteer basis. “Nicola Hengst-Gohlke doesn’t just generate ideas; she also works tirelessly to bring projects to fruition,” says Klaus Sänger, chairman of the Metzkausen Civic Association. “A lot of people just talk about what needs to be done. But she gets involved personally and sets an example for civic commitment.”
So what is it that playground patrons actually do? They check up on “their” playgrounds and report any damage. Depending on their availability and preferences, playground patrons also get involved in the renovation and redesign of playgrounds, organise playground festivals, and serve as contact persons for children, parents, and local residents. They moreover see themselves as intermediaries between citizens and the city administration. In addition, every year patrons are welcome participants in the Universal Children’s Day where they organise many festivities for children, as well as in the various summer and neighbourhood festivals and the anniversary celebrations of local clubs. Each of these highly diverse tasks has a different range of activity.
Hengst-Gohlke: “Here’s how a typical morning works: Just before 9:00 AM, the phone rings. Someone’s calling to complain that for years now, one of the playgrounds has been without a swing set. She says she’s read about the playground patrons in the newspaper and would like to become part of the network. At 9:30, a playground patron calls to say that there’s a bee’s nest on the wooden jungle gym. Several children have already been stung. I let the city administration know, and a beekeeper is called. At 10:00, I chair a neighbourhood meeting with the head of the Parks Department, which was organised at the initiative of a patron. A number of interested parties from the area around the playground, all of whom had been contacted in advance, show up in order to take part in the planned improvements. Ideas are exchanged, and agreement is reached on the next steps to be taken. At 11:00, I meet with my co-worker to discuss our children’s programme at the civic centre, planned for next weekend as part of the children’s flea market. At noon I stop by City Hall to have the mayor sign a certificate of patronage.
Since 2010, the annual World Play Day, which takes places each May 28, has been coordinated by patrons under the auspices of the Mayor’s Office.”
“Mettmann’s playground patrons serve an important function in pointing out shortcomings and seeing to it that things get taken care of,” says Holger Hofmann, head of the Play Spaces section at the Deutsches Kinderhilfswerk e.V. (German Children’s Fund) in Berlin. The citizens’ initiative now has a prominent supporter in television star and Mettmann native Ania Niedieck, known from the RTL network series “Alles was zählt” (“Everything That Counts”) and many other TV shows. “I’m very delighted about the wonderful commitment that playground patrons show to children in my home town,” says Niedieck.
A shortage of public funds leads to creative solutions, since there is very little room for financial manoeuvring. As a result, self-initiative on the part of citizens is all the more necessary. One patron is very inventive in this regard: Sandra Brune has lived in Mettmann with her husband and two children since 2007. In recent years, she and her now 19-year-old horse Chico have logged some 730 km in endurance riding, i.e. a marathon on horseback. She has volunteered her time as a patron since 2009. During this period, she learned about World Play Day and about the Bündnis “Recht auf Spiel” (“Right to Play” Alliance). Based on her desire to combine her own commitment to children at play with her passion for riding, she came up with the idea of launching a fund-raising horse ride in order to benefit the playgrounds for Mettmann’s children. “I also wanted to show that an ordinary person can make things happen and do something for our children, particularly when public monies aren’t available,” says Brune. The campaign “KiloMEter für Kinder” (“Kilometres for Children”) (www.kilometerfuerkinder.de) was launched as a collaborative effort and is scheduled to start in 2012.
Success depends on networking and learning from others. Playground patrons are members of the local action alliances “MEhr für Kinder” (“More for Children”) (www.mehrfuerkinder.de) and “Sauberes Mettmann” (“Clean Mettmann”), as well as the ABA Fachverband Offene Arbeit mit Kindern und Jugendlichen e.V. (ABA Professional Association Open Work with Children and Young Persons), with offices throughout the state of North Rhine-Westphalia (www.aba-fachverband.org). Further commitment consists of the national “Right to Play” Alliance of the German Children’s Fund (www.recht-auf-spiel.de). These platforms make it possible for like-minded people to come together to exchange ideas and information, to learn from one another, to think outside the box, and to develop projects in a collaborative manner. According to one patron, “Thanks to the commitment of the playground patrons, the Mettmann public is more aware of the role of playgrounds in the way children grow. These are public spaces that got a significant boost in perception. It’s also nice to experience how a ‘network’ has developed among the families of this city. Without these playgrounds, Mettmann would be less child-friendly, less lively, more boring, stagnant.”
As for her motivations, Hengst-Gohlke says, “With the ‘Playground Patrons for Mettmann’ citizens’ initiative, I would like use my professional and personal abilities, strengths, and talents in order to improve the immediate surroundings of my son, my family, and other children and their families in our city. Their active participation in this area is very near and dear to me. This volunteer work is my own personal contribution as a citizen of this city to working actively and constructively together with political parties, the city administration, civil society, and the economy in order to make the city more liveable for children and for us as families.” For instance, in this regard the local commuter rail company is taking part in the renovation of a playground near its headquarters. “It’s never too early to start thinking about future train conductors,” says Managing Director Joachim Kern about his commitment. Success speaks for itself. And to continue in the words of Oscar Wilde: “In the end, everything will be fine. If it’s not fine, it’s not the end.” In this sense, the local playground patrons will continue to work together with all interested parties in a constructive manner in order to make Mettmann even more child- and family-friendly.”
www.tollespielplaetze.de
According to needs planning undertaken by the city of Bonn in 2007, there are a sufficient number of playgrounds in Bad Godesberg, namely, 62 public playgrounds. However in 2007, only one third of Bad Godesberg playgrounds met the qualitative requirements.
But what are the requirements for a playground from the standpoint of the citizens of Bad Godesberg? The association “Tolle Spielplätze für Bad Godesberg e.V.” (“Great Playgrounds for Bad Godesberg”) looked into this and kept in mind: So many different people live in Bad Godesberg. From all over the world, older and younger children, seniors and young families, well-to-do and less well-to-do, people with successful lives and those with less successful ones. All of them will have different ideas as to what they want in a great playground. And they will have different needs. If you ask adults to recall where they most enjoyed spending time between the ages of seven and eleven, they’ll remember a small wall, a stairway, trees they climbed, backyards, a tree house they built, abandoned lots, forbidden building ruins, or hiding spots in hedges – the games they played included mother and child, fantastic journeys, self-built tents and houses, pranks they played together, cops and robbers, songs, and rituals. They rarely mention playgrounds. Adequate room for playing doesn’t have to be limited to a small, fenced-in play area; it should include a child’s entire surroundings. On the other hand, many of these surroundings aren’t suited to play: heavy, high-speed traffic, noisy children viewed as a disturbance, dog excrement and other filth. If playgrounds in Bad Godesberg are to be made more attractive and to have a higher quality, these aspects should be taken into consideration, and one needs to look beyond the “slide, seesaw, swing set” format of run-of-the-mill playgrounds. The task is to create playgrounds as living spaces with a variety of offerings: challenges involving fantasy and the zeal to move about, a vast topography with niches, hiding spots, caves, different landscape forms, and different playing and learning areas for making discoveries with all senses.
“Our association would like to make a contribution here. But since we are well aware of the differing needs of the residents of our district, we would simultaneously like to make a contribution to seeing that places come into being in our district where children, young persons, parents, grandparents, and neighbours like to gather and interact with one another. Therefore, playgrounds should be planned and designed together with the users – both big and little. Thought must also be given to subsequent offerings and to patronages through nearby schools or interested institutions. This will keep alive this delicate seedling of solidarity and turn the playground into a bustling living space that breathes life into the neighbourhood,” says Dr. Annette Windmeisser, chairwoman of the “Tolle Spielplätze für Bad Godesberg e.V.” association.
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Regarding her commitment in Bad Godesberg, Windmeisser continues, “I made my own posters and hung them up for the foundational meeting. A lot of interested people came, and from then on, we grew quickly. We formed a legal association in July 2010. Planning went forward for the playground in the Panorama Park, especially after Sarah Rams, currently a Board member and our architect, came on board. We got a lot of backing from the deputy mayor for the district, as well as from the Youth Welfare Office and the City Parks Department. Following completion of Phase 1 construction (full remediation of the existing playground), we turned the Bastei Playground over to the public exactly one year, in July 2011. Financing is in place for Phase 2 construction (expansion of the rope course and the swing sets). This is to take place along with Phase 3 construction during the winter and spring of 2012. The conceptual and financial support in the district is huge. Since there is a lot of solidarity in this part of the district – above and beyond the three playground festivals so far and a number of other campaigns – we feel that we really earned our stripes with this playground. What I mean is that we’re learning here how to cooperate with the city and political parties, with playground equipment manufacturers and landscape architects, with neighbours and users, and, of course, with donors! Through very time-consuming and concentrated fund-raising campaigns, we succeeded in raising € 28,000 in just three months.”
Planning for the Kapellenweg Playground began in parallel. Sarah Rams came up with the idea for a design competition at the University of Cologne and organised the collaboration. “We agreed with Dipl. Ing. Wulfkühler of the University of Cologne that we would collaborate with him during the 2011 summer semester, when he and his students would undertake the planning of this project as part of his seminar on ‘Care and Preservation of Green Spaces’,” said Windmeisser. This was how the “Tolle Spielplätze für Bad Godesberg e.V.” association, together with students in the landscape architecture programme at the University of Cologne and neighbourhood residents, began the planning for the redesign of the Kapellenweg Playground. On July 5, 2011, the proposals of the University of Cologne students were presented to the public and awarded prizes by a jury. The jury was composed of Prof. Dipl.-Ing. Gerd Hamacher (University of Cologne, chairman of the jury), Annette Schwolen-Flümann (deputy mayor, Bad Godesberg district), Dorothea Paschen (principal, Andreas School), Andrea Koors (child and youth ombudsman, City of Bonn), Dipl.- Ing. Barbara Wulff (Green Office, City of Bonn), Ms Paredes for the parents of the Regenbogen Kindergarten, Ms Fritz for the parents of the Andreas School, and two children from the Andreas School.
In his address, Prof. Hamacher highlighted the breadth of approaches and the high level of the proposals; Ms Schwolen-Flümann was impressed by the commitment of the students and the association. Annette Windmeisser, chairwoman of the association, thanked the students and the jury. She emphasised that the association relies on the support of parents and playground neighbours. “The playground lives through you! Without you, we won’t be able to breathe new life into it. We welcome any type of support you can give.”
Windmeisser continued, “In addition, we’ll need to create a completely new membership structure for the Kapellenweg Playground: Most of the current members don’t live in its immediate vicinity and don’t use it. But we also don’t want to be a charity organisation that comes in with playground equipment and just ‘drops it off’ with a helping attitude. That’s not the way to create solidarity. What we need to do is recruit members from this neighbourhood, create an atmosphere of interest, responsibility, and zest for participation, and on this basis mutually develop additional social offerings, which are truly needed. For example, there are concrete arrangements in place with an association for the support of refugee children (Ausbildung statt Abschiebung e.V.), and we’ll start things off with a big football tournament prior to the 2012 European Championships. Financing will come more heavily from foundations than was the case with the Bastei Playground, which was particularly attractive for private donors.”
The concept behind the “Tolle Spielplätze für Bad Godesberg e.V.” association is that playgrounds not only benefit children at play but also are places where parents, grandparents, and neighbours communicate with one another. For this reason, the association feels that for each playground, it is important to find a separate team that is drawn from the neighbourhood. This ultimately is intended to create greater solidarity and communal spirit. With a great deal of private commitment.
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