Solidarity with a heart.

Solidarity
with a heart.
2/2
About us
and what
we do
For over 90 years, AWO, through its unshakeable values
of solidarity, tolerance, freedom, equality and justice, has
focused on people who, for various reasons, find themselves
among society’s socially disadvantaged. Be they disadvantaged
children and adults, senior citizens, people with disabilities,
people from an immigrant background, the homeless,
the unemployed or the sick.
Despite the abstract nature of these values, the volunteers
and full-time employees of AWO time and again successfully
encourage inclusion and ensure that those affected are not
left out, giving them a voice and helping them to manage
their day-to-day lives. We offer help, but not in the sense of
charity. Our aim is rather to help people affected by problems
to join or return to society.
More than ever, we need to speak up for justice and cohesion in our society. This is what AWO does in its work for
and with people.
Children
and
families
Every day, AWO’s employees in more than 3,500 organisations do
their best to look after children, young people, parents and families.
Children need love, understanding and protection to find their place
in our society. We need to nurture their abilities. This is a task which
we fulfil in our crèches, nursery schools and after-school care facilities.
We support and advise young people in youth support facilities,
for example through school social work and in our youth centres.
We also offer holiday programmes.
We strengthen their sense of belonging and community spirit through
holiday trips, we offer them international youth meetings, educational
events and our own, independent organisations for young people.
The AWO accepts all forms of family as equally valid and supports them
all – with family-friendly care for children, with support when caring
for relatives and providing home-based services. AWO offers parenting
and family classes, not just in times of crisis and conflict, but also in
normal everyday situations.
02 / 03
ElternService
(Parents service)
elternservice-awo.de
The ElternService AWO offers
individual and flexible services
throughout Germany aimed at improving the family / work balance.
headquarters in Bielefeld.
This ensures that competent
and individual advice can be
provided locally.
The proven economic effects of a
family-orientated policy are convincing more and more employers
that supporting their employees
with childcare or caring for relatives is a profitable investment.
This is where the advice, information and mediation service from
ElternService AWO steps in.
The ElternService AWO also only
recommends trained and qualified
personnel, such as baby-sitters,
child care workers or nannies. It
helps parents find suitable children’s daycare centres or crèches.
The advice we offer, along with
the provision of support or care
services for relatives requiring assistance, is based on very
careful compliance with quality
standards.
The ElternService AWO’s regional
advice offices are connected in
a nationwide network and are
coordinated from the company’s
Education
and training
04 / 05
The Federal Republic of Germany
is a long way off having a modern
education system that leaves
nobody behind and which offers
future generations every opportunity to succeed in the face of tough
global competition. This means
that the safeguarding of prosperity
and social care are at risk for people who are no longer employed,
as well as future employees.
Anyone who invests in the future and younger gene­
ration, anyone who wants to lend more support to
education, training and research, must provide the
means required. AWO advocates a society fit for chil­
dren in which children are not resources, but rather
prospects. Education is the key to this. AWO expressly
encourages the infrastructural development of child­
care facilities before the provision of further direct
or indirect financial benefits for children and their
families. This is the only way to achieve a sustainable
improvement in family support services in Germany as
a whole. This is the only way to achieve a consistent
improvement in the education, support and upbringing
of children in the first years of their pre-school life.
Access to education – be it in children’s daycare centres,
schools or universities – must be free of charge. This is
the only socially acceptable solution. Education should
not depend on the parents’ finances.
Migration
The history of mankind is one of
migration. The distinction between
emigration and immigration goes
hand in hand with the emergence
of nation states. The term migration
means the process of relocating the
focal point of someone’s life and
does not distinguish between the
reasons for their migration.
Migration social work, as one of
AWO’s key areas of action, aims to
support and assist individual migration processes. AWO has a number
of advice services (such as advice for
people moving to Germany for the
first time, as well as immigration
services for young people) that can
help. It offers integration courses
and a number of other projects.
06 / 07
Migration social work is however not
just a specialist service for people
with an immigrant background. It is
also an element of all other aspects
of social work. The question of how
these social services can be organised
in these areas lies behind the key
concept of intercultural openness.
All AWO organisations are encouraged
to open up their existing as well as
new services and facilities from an
intercultural perspective. It is important to ensure that migrants are
represented according to their share
of the population in the services
provided; that conceptually, organisationally and on a human resources
level, the needs of affected people
are addressed in the organisations
and measures.
We determine our actions by the
values of free and democratic
socialism: solidarity, tolerance,
freedom, equality and justice.
From the AWO’s guiding principles.
Health
08 / 09
Health is one of life’s most precious commodities. The health
policy creates the legal framework
to ensure that our health is
maintained and that we are all
provided with high-quality care if
we fall ill. In our acute hospitals,
we help all patients to recover; in
our spa, recreational and rehabilitation centres, we provide care
and after-care. Working with the
people affected and their families,
we support and encourage the
setting-up of self-help groups.
Addictions – alcohol, nicotine,
drugs or gambling – can destroy
people and their families. But it is
a disease, and therefore it can be
treated and cured with therapy.
The AWO’s counselling centres,
specialist hospitals and rehabilitation centres, residential groups
and self-help initiatives support
victims of addiction.
In addition to quality assurance,
the financial sustainability of
the healthcare system first and
foremost represents a major challenge for health policy. The AWO is
supporting the reform process and
actively contributing its suggestions and ideas to the discussion
process.
GesundheitsService
(Health service)
The GesundheitsService AWO is a Germany-wide association
of institutions that offer health promotion services in various
gesundheitsservice-awo.de domains. Through its GesundheitsService AWO, AWO offers a
variety of opportunities to access healthcare.
Advice centres provide support, for example, with application processes and the choice of a suitable clinic as well as
providing information on how parent-child breaks work. In
order to ensure that the benefits obtained from the break are
continued when the parent and child return home, the GesundheitsService AWO offers an after-care programme which
includes a variety of services.
In terms of prevention for families, there is a choice of health
awareness programmes for exercise, nutrition and relaxation.
Company health promotion schemes offer various programmes
aimed at reducing and preventing health problems in the
workplace.
People with
disabilities
10 / 11
People who are restricted or slightly different in
their physical or mental capacities want us to accept
them and help them to live as independently and
on their own as much as possible. We help them do
this in sheltered housing, daycare centres, workshops
and training facilities or with mobile services. The
AWO maintains a network of in-patient and partially
ward-based, out-patient and mobile services that offer people with disabilities medical, educational and
professional support. Over 13,000 employees in 400
facilities and services demonstrate their commitment
to this on a daily basis.
We help people to live their lives
independently and be responsible for
their own actions, and we support
alternative lifestyle concepts.
From the AWO’s guiding principles.
Later life
12 / 13
Older people are more active than ever; they want to
live their lives independently and the way they want.
AWO has plenty to offer them everywhere, such as
day centres and clubs or on popular trips organised
by AWO. One wall too many, a step too high? AWO can
help older people whose living accommodation is not
suited to their needs with home advice. Anyone who
needs more support and service to live independently could be eligible for the “assisted living” or
mobile services provided by AWO.
At some point in their lives, elderly
people become reliant on help
from others. AWO supports the
independence of older people in
their own homes with domestic
and care services. Daycare centres
or short-term respite care facilities allow AWO to help those who
require help to carry on living in
their home environments. Our
senior citizens’ centres or care
homes, however, also ensure that
individuals’ quality of life remains
intact. Our nursing services are independently tested to ensure they
comply with quality standards. This
creates confidence amongst our
residents and their relatives.
Work
14 / 15
People without paid work often
experience feelings of low selfesteem, hopelessness, social
isolation and guilt. Anyone who
has never been affected by unemployment and who has never
experienced what it feels like to
slide down the social ladder will
indeed be unable to imagine what
that means. To counteract these,
we need courage, a willingness to
take risks, education, responsibility – and many new ideas. At AWO,
we have developed numerous
employment initiatives and tools
and offer training as well as skills.
We have also been able to create a
number of new jobs.
We have a wide variety of services
to offer young unemployed people.
These include, for example, activities for socially deprived young
people who are offered social
education support in our own
employment centres during their
vocational training.
We practice solidarity and
strengthen people’s community
responsibility.
From the AWO’s guiding principles.
18 / 18
We advocate democratic
and social ideas and actions.
We have visions that support society.
From the AWO’s guiding principles.
Advice and
assistance
18 / 19
Skilled social work needs specialist
knowledge. Our highly trained
employees are constantly updating
their knowledge with new findings, understanding new legislation, guidelines and directives
and training to learn new skills.
To help them do this, we offer a
diverse range of services in our
own training institutions and the
AWO Federal Academy.
Our services are for the people.
Which is why the quality of our
work must always be dependable – and the employees in the
numerous AWO advice and support
organisations have signed up to
this pledge – be it through abortion counselling, women’s refuges,
addiction counselling, homeless
assistance, ex-offender rehabilitation or debt counselling.
The AWO, with its volunteer work
and professional services, campaigns
for a socially just society.
From the AWO’s guiding principles.
Civic engagement
20 / 21
People have always worked voluntarily and without payment in
the interests of the community.
Traditionally, this is considered as
voluntary work and, within AWO,
it remains the most commonly
used term for everything that
our group of volunteers for the
common good achieves. This is in
addition to the voluntary work
carried out by the board of directors, and is especially true for the
voluntary social work provided
by the 100,000 volunteer helpers
in our local teams. Volunteering
represents duty, continuity and
reliability and is an important
stabilising factor in the association’s work.
Civic engagement includes the
vision of a new understanding of
what makes a citizen. When volunteers wish to engage in social
contact, recognition or activity
that has a personal significance,
this provides an opportunity first
and foremost to explore personal
interests. For the AWO, it was clear
that the renewal and intensification of civic engagement cannot
take place without fundamental
reform processes within its own
organisational structures and in
the design of its association and
corporate policies. Consequently,
it has made the support of civic
engagement a central theme in
its organisational development.
Appropriate reform motions were
drafted for the entire organisation
at an AWO Germany conference in
2007 in Magdeburg.
Social
Europe
22 / 23
AWO is convinced that a social
Europe is feasible and is strongly
committed to this concept: Shared
values must form the core of the
European social model. The principle of solidarity and social security
must apply to all people within
the European Social Union and access to high-quality social services
must be guaranteed. The European
Social Union must offer its citizens
equal educational opportunities
– regardless of their social background. It must enable citizens to
find humane work for a humane
existence. Anti-discrimination
legislation must be enforced in all
areas of life. The equality of men
and women is also essential for a
social Europe. The European Social
Union must be committed to the
equality of economic and social
policy.
The AWO is a founding member
of Solidar, a European network of
NGOs and trade union organisations that was founded in 1948
under the name “International
Workers’ Aid”. Together with Solidar, the AWO is fighting for a social
Europe.
We act with social, economic,
ecological and international
responsibility and are committed
long-term to the careful use
of available resources.
From the AWO’s guiding principles.
AWO
International
24 / 25
AWO has been an active figure in development cooperation for more than 40 years. Its primary goal has
been and remains the reduction of poverty through
self-help. Only through a permanent change of
structures that cause poverty and obstruct development can poverty be tackled in the long term. This is
particularly true for the development of indigenous
peoples. It is not so much a lack of resources, but
rather equal access to these resources that mostly
determines the economic and social position of
disadvantaged sections of the population.
AWO has organised its international activities into the AWO
International network. AWO International promotes projects and
programmes with the following
priorities: Education, nutrition,
health / rehabilitation, women
and children, the environment,
income-generating activities.
AWO International deliberately
works with local organisations and
non-governmental, independent partners on the ground. The
idea of “help for self-help” is
the inspiration behind our work.
Through long-term projects and
a concentration on certain focus
countries (India, Nepal, Chile, the
Philippines), AWO International
has developed a stable network
of reliable and dedicated partner
organisations.
awo.org
AWO Bundesverband e. V.
Blücherstr. 62/63
10961 Berlin
Telephone: (+49) 30 – 263 09 – 0
Fax: (+49) 30 – 263 09 – 325 99
E-mail: info@awo.org
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Internet: awo.org
Responsible: Wolfgang Stadler, Board Chairman
Editing: Communications Department
Design: hakotowi.com
© AWO Bundesverband e.V.
September 2011
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