The team of Eltern AG
In Germany, the Families program is expanding partner by partner, volunteer by volunteer, and is now poised to reach more families in need than ever before.
Last June, Germany was the first country to start The Human Safety Net, focusing since inception on the Families and Refugee Start-Ups programs. And for the past eleven months The Human Safety Net program managers have been running “Smart Cafés” in several Generali locations. From Hamburg to Munich, Saarbrucken to Leipzig and beyond, these events were designed to familiarize local Generali employees with the new initiative and recruit supporters for both programs in the country.
The Families program in Germany is run in partnership with Eltern AG, a recognized preventive empowerment program designed for socially-disadvantaged and isolated families to improve their parenting skills to provide better education, health and life chances for their children.
Over the past months, efforts to identify and expanding the footprint in other German cities of the Families program have proceeded in lockstep with volunteer education. “During this first phase, our search for interested cooperation partners had top priority,” says Eileen Buß, who works with Eltern AG on the The Human Safety Net’s Families program “And thanks to the excellent contacts Generali employees have provided, we’ve been able to bring on five new permanent partners for our program.”
New partners include Jugendwerk Aufbau Ost JAO (Berlin), an organization with roughly 600 employees that provides a range of care options for children, youths and families; Herbie e.V. (Leipzig), boasting 120 employees who offer ambulatory educational aid, stationary aid in living groups and more; Stadtteilzentrum Steglitz (Berlin), which works with children and teenagers, runs kindergartens and focuses on working with neighborhood communities; The Caritas (Saarbrücken), which provides mentoring for families, homes for children and early childhood development; and - last but not least - the Lernende Region (Cologne), which provides a wide range of education opportunities for parents in the belief that strong parents create stronger children.
New local partners and trainers are being added all the time, and new partnerships are currently under consideration with organizations in Augsburg, Aachen, Leipzig, Munich, Frankfurt on Main, Hamburg, Cologne, Stuttgart, Nuremberg and Karlsruhe.
One volunteer at a time, one partner at a time, The Human Safety Net movement continues to grow!