[Social infrastructure and community engagement from and for the young old. Eastern German municipalities explore new ways].
Demographic changes in the former East Germany are starting earlier and are more dramatic, and the serious financial difficulties of former East German municipalities are forcing a radical modernization of institutions for public services in the direction of a civil community. Municipalities profit, if citizen initiatives can partially make up for the decline of standards in public services. This saves community resources. An especially important group supporting community engagement is the group of"young old." Community engagement needs publically supported structures. A municipality that would like to activate the young old to support public services, which means to improve the quality of life in the community, cannot simply shift the services previously supplied by the state on to the citizens. The idea alone is not only questionable, but the implementation will fail due to the lack of voluntariness of the engagement. Hence, the successful reorganization of the local municipality requires a new understanding of the task distribution: the readiness to adapt the structures of the municipal government and administration, which assumes the roll of the initiator, moderator, and organizer of the boundary conditions. The present article describes the state of the situation and successful initiatives from two model projects of the Federal Government Commission for Rebuilding East Germany (Bundesbeauftragten für den Aufbau Ost).
Dienel
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HL
nexus-Institut für Kooperationsmanagement und interdisziplinäre Forschung GmbH Berlin, Otto-Suhr-Allee 59, 10585, Berlin, Deutschland. dienel@ztg.tu-berlin.de
von Blanckenburg
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C
D000368:Aged; D002958:City Planning; D003256:Community Participation; D005859:Germany, East; D006040:Goals; D006801:Humans; D009111:Local Government; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D011157:Population Dynamics; D017150:Public Sector; D011788:Quality of Life; D014838:Volunteers