Poject Nippes Museum Cologne
Description - The Local Context - Response
Response
Sustainable effects
Organisation:
Implementation of the CI - project caused an internal reorganisation and
revision of concepts on three levels:
- methods adopted in social casework, youth work and community activities,
- type of co-operation on the local and regional level and
- mediation in a field of overlapping and conflicting perspectives and professional standards of labour, social and youth administration, schools, firms and social or youth work.
Local government response:
New methods adopted developed mainly from combining teaching, mediation
and political education. The compromise adopted in combining labour market
oriented training and political education led to a concept of empowering
young migrants as intercultural mediators. The project caused satisfying
response on the level of basic contacts with teachers, trainers and small
organisations working with the same target group of immigrants and with
a unique professional background, whereas local and regional co-operation
between schools, social work and labour administration lacked consistency
of goals, methods and concepts adopted. Although the social administration
in Germany has adopted some economic principles there are some countervailing
powers, such as local programme budgeting and social planning, which have
not lost their professional background. From that background there was
a chance of professional networking, f.e. in the context of the local
immigration programme which works on the basis of social work standards.
National or state level response:
Prevention of unemployment, open schools and strengthening of employment
scheemes in general form the main characteristics of states' employment
policies in Germany. These aims have been combined in settings of modernising
social administration and community development. Implementation and timing
of these state programmes, however, contrast with their intention insofar
they are dominated by standards of the labour administration. But the
centralised, slightly authoritarian concept of employment policies is
embedded into a wider field of programmes gaining at social integration
of target groups and giving room for preventive methods. The concrete
outcome depends particularly on local practices and standards, slightly
modificated by national welfare organisations. Therefore the project response
on the level of national politics had to be sought along a line between
interorganisational discussion in the umbrella organisation, local programme
bargaining and professional co-operation in the fields of youth unemployment,
local migration politics and local political participation.
Participants:
Inhomogenous groups (mixed sex, nationality and level of education) proved
successful in avoiding isolation and concurrence among immigrants, which
normally are caused by the school system and inappropriate, i.e. discriminating
or compensative methods against unemployment. The type of guidance and
consultation had to be moderating, comparing and evaluating the complex
field of many conflicting types of measures and concepts of training and
motivating in the local field. Empowerment was gained if the participants
could take roles of evaluating and analysing biografies, work experiences
and socalled cultural diversities. Subjects or themes with specific effects
for motivation and sustainablity were the following: schools careers,
especially disappoiting school experiences; inconsistent social carreers;
double-binds between trained or expected work-orientation and real imperatives
of the labour market.
Step by step the reflection and co-operative evaluation of live-courses
enabled a number of participants in role-taking as intercultural mediators,
which caused some response also in terms of success on the labour market.
Participation in the Museum's programme formed part of a slight empowerment.
Description
- The Local Context - Response
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