The SOS Children’s Villages provide protection and warmth – and not only to children and young people. A visit to the SOS Children’s Villages in Bockum and Bremen shows how this can be achieved. Vaillant Germany supplied both SOS Children’s Villages with modern heating technology.
“Our Children’s Village is actually a city,” says Sylvia Schikker, Director of the SOS Children’s Village Bremen, which has sites in not just one, but twenty locations in the city. An above-average number of children and families suffer from poverty in Bremen. SOS Children’s Villages offers a lot to counteract this situation.
Above all, those affected are given space. Places where children, young people and families experience support rather than hardship and problems. The organisation includes children’s housing groups, shared housing for young people, drop-in and flexible services, a day group, school partnerships, day-care centres, support services, a placement centre for siblings and a neighbourhood and family centre in the Neustadt area of the city.
Anyone who enters the neighbourhood and family centre is warmly welcomed. There is something for everyone to eat and drink. Before long, conversations start up: with other children, parents or the specialist staff. Here, a young father is waiting for his consultation appointment together with his young child in the play corner, over there a woman is donating her little daughter’s clothes to the second-hand shop on the first floor; an elderly couple comes for lunch. “We take a holistic approach,” says Sylvia Schikker. “We want to help the people and families of the city to live positively and to offer them something.” And they offer a lot: midwife consultations, advice for young parents-to-be, baby clubs, parent-child groups, language courses, the second-hand shop, handicraft and music afternoons for children, and free football training in cooperation with Werder Bremen football club, among other things. The people of Bremen gratefully accept the support.
We want to help the people and families of the city to live positively.
Director of the SOS Children’s Village Bremen
A range of services as extensive as this requires good organisation – and people to lend a hand. Fortunately, there are plenty of them here: in addition to the more than 200 full-time employees, 120 volunteers also enthusiastically support the SOS Children’s Village in Bremen.
One of them is Corinna Pytzka. Together with 17 other volunteers, she helps in the language cafe “For old and new residents of the city”. People from Ukraine, Syria, Afghanistan, Iran and Africa meet there six times a week to learn German. Sometimes they go on excursions, and special language courses for parents have recently been introduced. Corinna Pytzka regards these meetings as hugely enriching: “I love finding out so much about people and helping them understand our culture. Everyone brings in something from their home country,” says the volunteer.
“Doing good is easy if there are many to help” – what this quote from SOS Children’s Villages founder Hermann Gmeiner means can be felt in Bremen. Welcoming. Listening. Providing space. Responding personally to many different needs. That is how warmth is embodied in this large and diverse Children’s Village, which is actually a city.
The SOS Children’s Village Bockum is a village in the truest sense of the word – with name signposts and its own bus stop –, but it is not a typical Children’s Village. The village community of Hof Bockum is located about 130 kilometres east of Bremen, in the Lüneburg Heath. The former farming estate includes several dwellings, a historic mill, greenhouses, stables and around 60 hectares of land. “There’s a very particular spirit here,” says Wolfgang Glauser, Head of Hof Bockum. “People who come here experience a warm, pleasant, kind-hearted feeling. It’s hard to explain exactly where that comes from.”
Hof Bockum is special in many ways. For example, it is rare to see children in this SOS Children’s Village, because a good hundred adults with an intellectual impairment live and work here. Wolfgang Glauser and his team do not see them as employees of a workshop for people with disabilities – they are colleagues. The whole establishment is operated on this equal footing. There are committees such as the workshop council and women’s representatives, to whom residents can voice their concerns and be heard. The staff at Hof Bockum accompany them on their path to social and professional participation. The special principle of house communities is applied here. “House parents” live together with the residents. One of the parents is entrusted with the pedagogical care within the house community, while the other works together with the residents in one of the various work areas. There are many of these to suit the individual needs and preferences of the residents. The produce from the farm, plant nursery and cheese dairy meets BIOLAND standards. Hof Bockum provides about 100 people with on-site employment and external work at businesses in the region.
Wolfgang Glauser is very satisfied with the working conditions at Hof Bockum: “We benefit from the fact that we are part of SOS Children’s Villages. And from cooperations such as the one with the Vaillant Group, for example. Of course, this organisation and the support provide space and opportunities – and that makes the working conditions much better.” Work Manager Michael Grebe agrees and adds: “The right to participation and self-determination is very important to us. We are developing a wide range of offers to make this possible. Together, we are shaping the development processes and supporting independent action wherever possible, or otherwise offering the necessary assistance. The careers guidance phase can last one to two years, and the residents can still change direction at a later stage.”
A special area of work at Hof Bockum is taking care of the 40 dairy cows, says Wolfgang Glauser: “Looking after a living being so that it stays healthy and building a relationship with it is a good experience for a lot of people.” The team looks after the livestock, grows and handles the feed and makes sure that the animals have enough straw and hay. The employees process grass into animal feed and milk into cheese.
The products and services from Hof Bockum are appreciated and in demand in the local area. The milk from Hof Bockum has even received an award as the “best milk in the region”. The institution is firmly anchored in the region, and everyone knows everyone. The farm is open to local people and invites them to visit. The farm products are available 365 days a year from a “Regiomat” – a vending machine selling regional products. Two days a week, the residents of Hof Bockum sell dairy products and vegetables. On the day of the harvest festival, they decorate the church in Amelinghausen – and when the regional heather blossom festival is celebrated, all the residents of Bockum join the parade. “For us, participation and inclusion doesn’t necessarily mean we have to head out into the wider world. It can also mean bringing the external environment closer to us. At our annual festival at the end of June, that means welcoming up to 3,000 guests,” says Wolfgang Glauser.
The international partnership between the children’s rights organisation and the Vaillant Group began ten years ago. In Germany, the family-owned company has been supporting SOS Children’s Villages since 2015. Carsten Stelter from the company Horst Stelter played his part with the installation of two new Vaillant heating systems at the Hof Bockum SOS site. “I was already very familiar with SOS-Hof Bockum when the request came in from Vaillant, because we had worked there several times before,” heating engineer Carsten Stelter recalls. Two heating systems had to be replaced as quickly as possible.
It was a case of taking the old heating technology out, and putting new heating systems and a solar system on the roof in. Vaillant delivered the equipment to the site and we installed it within three days.
The 54-year-old, who has three children of his own, one of whom has Down’s Syndrome, says the SOS-Hof Bockum is a great place because the residents can do meaningful work on the farm with the loving support of the caregivers. “It shows warmth really is about more than just temperature.”
The urban SOS Children’s Village in Bremen and Hof Bockum are very different. And they are just two of the SOS Children’s Villages in Germany. As an international organisation, SOS Children’s Villages has over 530 villages worldwide. With facilities that meet the needs of people on the ground. There is no one-size-fits-all solution for how to create a warm atmosphere. But there are fundamental steps that all SOS Children’s Villages follow: offering security and prospects for the future. Respecting uniqueness and embracing diversity. Cultivating a culture of togetherness. In this way, a warm and cosy home is created in every SOS Children’s Village – even if the design is varied and unique in each case.
The Vaillant Group and “SOS Children’s Villages worldwide” have been enjoying a close partnership for ten years. The company aids the charity’s work by providing energy-efficient heating technology and therefore helps the children and young people at SOS Children’s Villages to experience a warm home – in every sense of the word. The idea is that the social commitment of the Vaillant Group should be directly linked to the company’s core expertise. SOS Children’s Villages in 24 countries have already benefited from this partnership, including the SOS Children’s Villages in Bremen and at Hof Bockum.
