Children and Youth Officer of the City of Chemnitz

In April, a discussion was held with young people and city politicians on the topic of health at school and environmental protection. Together with a partner, the participants presented their wishes for a healthy lifestyle at school - more specifically, for recycling. It was important to all participants that the words and ideas put forward were followed by action. The councillors asked the young people to submit their proposal to the school and sports committee.

The young people took the proposal into their own hands. Their proposal for all Chemnitz schools emerged from the position paper of the motion in the Future Committee. It was important to the project group to stand up for all schools in their city. With the support of the Chemnitz film workshop, they made a short video clip specifically for this purpose. The result:

The application was submitted to the city council and passed there in June 2023 (BA-034/2023). Funding for the installation of waste separators in municipal school buildings comes from the Zero Waste concept.

Since January 2023, the youngest children in the daycare centre of the 1st Montessori Children's House have been planning their children's party with the teachers and on 1 June the time had come: a sun festival with three main focuses: Bouncing, playing and crafting. Planning also took place for a new flowering meadow directly in front of their house. The girls and boys were involved in deciding what to do. They worked on the flowering meadow and drew up a construction plan.

On 5 October, the company carrying out the work, landscape architects Jacob + Bilz, arrived with an excavator and received the construction plan from the young Chemnitz residents. The office helped the children to select the tasks and the plants. The City of Chemnitz's Children and Youth Officer and the children from the 1st Montessori Children's Centre broke ground. What other wishes do the children have for the meadow? The children will collect wood and create a pile of dead wood. A gardening project with the parents was also planned for 17 October. At the end, the children created their own activity boards for the animals and plants in the meadow.

Young people from the educational support programme put forward an unusual proposal: we are making our own children's festival.

Summer (time) means festival time! For the children and young people from Gablenz, planning for a children's music festival was in full swing in summer 2023. For the first time, a festival for the younger residents of the district was to take place in the first week of the summer holidays. The grounds of the "Liddy" house and the EL ZWO children's and youth club served as the planning and event venue.

The youth team and the Chemnitz association MENSCHemnitz gGmbH planned the festival in several stages at EL ZWO. Ideas included names such as the Lollipop Festival, the Yallah-Yallah Festival and the I-Kiss-Your-Heart Festival. On 5 May 2023, the clear winner was decided: "I-kiss-your-heart-festival". Now it was all about the design. "How do I design a poster?" was worked out with designer Nadine Rothe. Games, music and art were planned. Children's art printing was also included.

On Friday, 14 July at 2 pm sharp, the children and young people opened the children's music festival "I kiss your heart" at the EL ZWO youth club. Highlights of the festival included bands and musical performances by the youth, "Ich & Herr Meyer", a children's dance group and the band "Raketen Erna" as well as a fire show.

A great film was also made together with the Chemnitz film workshop: Aftermovie for the children's music festival (filmwerkstatt.de)

The gardens of the daycare centres "Rasselbande" and "Sonnenblume" at Carl-von Ossietzky Straße 190 were previously separated by a fence. At a gardening festival and a fantasy trip to "Sisasause Land", it becomes clear what the boys and girls want: The fence has to go! The shared use of the garden was extensively trialled over the summer and the rules for playing, building and running around together without a fence were laid down by the children themselves in one of the first meetings.

There was another highlight in November: the children's and youth officer presented the two daycare centres with a circus wagon as a mobile venue for the large garden. It is flexible, mobile and colourful and is intended to encourage the children to meet each other and make joint decisions with the adults. For example, the children can use the circus wagon to discuss the future design and use of the garden.

The SportsBuddys of the Stadtsportbund Chemnitz e. V. were founded to provide very individualised support for children and young people. It is not always easy for young people to discover a sport or "their" sport, to get to know a suitable sports club and to find their way into this club in the long term.

The SportsBuddys have the task of supporting young people in this process. The SportsBuddys form a sports sub-committee and come together as a team and are growing in number.

In December 2023, the daycare centre at Bernhardstraße 77 finally got the fixed football goals it had wanted and celebrated this with a goal festival. At the sports festival in September, the football tournament still took place with the old goals with textile nets. However, they wear out very quickly...

To mark the inauguration of the new football goals, the SportsBuddys presented a sports box with a wide variety of materials for sporting activities. Sport can and will always be an integral part of everyday life at the daycare centre.

On 17 December, at 2 pm, the future Bürgerpark Gablenz was opened. Leon, the project sponsor, had the floor. He opened the park as part of an Advent celebration with Mayor Michael Stötzer, the Mitte-Ost citizens' platform and the children and youth representative. Afterwards, the Free Evangelical Community of Chemnitz invited everyone to sing Christmas carols.

The open space around the site of the former Kepler-Gymnasium on Hans-Ziegler-Straße was selected for the European Capital of Culture Chemnitz 2025 as an intervention area for the Mitte Ost citizens' platform to transform the wasteland into a citizens' park. With an area of around 4.2 hectares, the green space is one of the largest intervention areas. Work on Bürgerpark Gablenz is almost complete. A youth activity area with a connection to the tram stop, two table tennis tables, a connecting network of paths, equipment such as benches, litter bins, bicycle racks, four fitness machines and a paved access road have been created so that events can take place in the area. The fitness equipment was selected in a small workshop for young and old in the Future Committee with the young people, the sponsor Leon, the after-school council and the city's children and youth officer.

Public relations work with children was carried out in every project in the Future Package for Culture, Exercise and Health. The programme tested and implemented a wide range of suggestions, activities and ways of youth-specific public relations work. The children's consultation hours had the task of showing the young people of Chemnitz the art of event planning. The children's team practised organisation, adherence to safety regulations and the organisation of advertising for and in their projects.

Printing techniques were used for T-shirts and on festival bags or gym bags. Another new feature was the design of chocolates on children's rights: Children's rights were first explained, then painted on the packaging of fair trade chocolates and given to decision-makers. Another highlight was the painting of signs by children for children. The painted "snow shovels" were given a public and inclusive place on the flowering meadow. They show children with and without a migration background the emerging nature. In this way, the programme was able to support measures that help to socially integrate young people with a refugee background.

Whether at the open-air gallery during Corona, collecting rubbish in the park or distributing children's rights chocolate at the market - the Children and Youth Officer always has an ear for the concerns of young people and their carers and helps to place them in the right committees and networks in the city.

For example, together with a scout from Kindervereinigung Chemnitz e. V., she was the contact person for the "human rights observers" in the classes ofFriedrich-Adolf-Wilhelm-Diesterweg-Oberschule. The aim of this campaign was to strengthen peace in the school and promote the pupils' social skills.

At the beginning of 2021, the Local Alliance for Families in Chemnitz and the Children and Youth Officer called on all kindergartens, day care centres and after-school care centres to take part in a children's painting competition.
competition for an open-air gallery. 30 facilities and around 1000 children took part with pictures, handicrafts and short texts. "The response has been overwhelming," said Ute Spindler, Children and Youth Officer, who would like to visit all the works to talk to the young people of Chemnitz. In the participatory campaign for institutions, such as daycare centres and schools, or individuals, Chemnitz children exhibited their own works of art visibly on fences and online from 1 February to 26 March 2021. The pictures were presented with the aim of setting an example for children in the city.

What's going on at the youth welfare office? Familiarisation with the youth welfare office, its employees and services for school classes

Families are invited to get active and put their fitness to the test at various stations at the annual family hiking day "Chemnitz Families on the Move" organised by the Children and Youth Officer and her partners. Participants also get to know youth welfare and sports organisations and can actively engage with their children's rights. The campaign is supported by Hanisauland, the cross-media programme of the Federal Agency for Civic Education for children between the ages of 8 and 14.

At the end of 2022, the Children and Youth Officer, together with the illustrator Stephanie Brittnacher and thanks to the support of the "Lions Club Chemnitz Schmidt Rottluff e. V." presented Chemnitz's "My Little City Hidden Object Book CHEMNITZ" to the "Babylotse" outreach preventative work project.

The baby guides are on hand to help pregnant women and families with newborn babies in the city's two maternity clinics with all questions and applications. The outreach workers support new parents after the birth with information, counselling and referrals and present them with a gift during a welcome visit.

The Children and Youth Representative has been a member of the jury for the Chemnitz Environmental Award since 2015 and is the point of contact for young people and their concerns. The competition was launched in 1991 as an environmental education campaign and serves to sensitise children and young people to environmental issues, such as climate and species protection. Find out more on the Chemnitz Environmental Award website.

Introduction of the Chemnitz Family App for the Children's Conference 2024

On 23 September 2024, the FamilyApp Chemnitz was launched as part of the Children's Conference at Chemnitz Town Hall - a platform that conveniently delivers advice, leisure and education services for families, teenagers and young adults to mobile phones.