Arvato Group | Kassel, 12/20/2019

General works council gives hands-on support for Christmas

AFS is giving this year's Christmas donation to the children's and youth farm in Kassel and is not only providing financial support - the general works council rolled up its sleeves and actively helped out.

In the middle of a densely built-up district of Kassel, a town in central Germany, lie the grounds of the children's and youth farm, which the founders of the association leased from the city in 2007. Here, children and adolescents have the opportunity to spend their leisure time in an agricultural, ecologically oriented and pedagogically supervised area - in the middle of the city. The goals of the association were clearly defined right from the start: "Our project promotes environmental awareness, social integration, basic qualifications and thus educational opportunities, democratic awareness and health in general among children and adolescents of all ages," says co-founder Catarina von Schwerin. For her and her team, there was always one premise: "The children's and youth farm is a social and ecological offer that is aimed at really all children and young people. This is one of the reasons why the visit is free of charge".

The association depends on donations so that the children can continue to visit the farm for free. Arvato Financial Solutions made just such a donation of €20,000 this year. The project was selected by the AFS General Works Council (GWC), formed by members of the individual works council on the German sites, which had taken care of the Christmas donation project this year.

Britta Gröning, General Works Council Member at AFS, explains the reasons: "The way the entire team takes care of the children here and works with them to create something so important for their own development touched us deeply. Through interaction, togetherness, but also the responsibility they are given for the animals, for example, they learn skills that will be valuable throughout their lives."

Therefore, the members of the General Works Council also agreed that, in addition to the donation, they also wanted to actively support the project on site. A total of 15 employees from different German locations travelled to the farm and worked there for two days. They freed a long strip of the site from blackberry hedges and other bushes, anchoring and erecting a long fence on it. This fence will offer the children protection from the neighbouring river Fulda in the future. The workshop in the adjoining barn, where children and adults carry out daily manual work for the farm, was also further equipped and expanded with the help of the GWC.

The result at the end of the two days was impressive, as this video  shows.