Idyllically situated at the Möhnesee and in bright sunshine, we were once again able to welcome many families, officials, and interesting speakers to our intergenerational conference on the last Saturday in October.
The event began with three welcome addresses from our association president Dr. Elisabeth Müller, followed by the chairwoman of the large family association of North Rhine-Westphalia, Isabel Gronack-Walz, and as a video message, the Minister for Family Affairs in North Rhine-Westphalia, Josephine Paul.
Dr. Inés Brock-Harder, Chairwoman of the Association for Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy bkj, summed up the importance of a supportive environment in her keynote speech. She emphasized the importance of siblings, who support each other and play a major role in identity development. She also highlighted characteristics of parenting in large families and the positive aspects that can result from this.
This was followed by three keynote speeches. First, the president of the European umbrella organization for large families, Regina Maroncelli, reported on the Europe-wide project of family-friendly municipalities. There are already several award-winning municipalities that are committed to implementing family-friendly measures. She also presented the criteria for this. Architect Gerd Schreiner, who supports the association’s “Housing” working group, then reported on some good examples of what family-friendly housing and construction could look like in the future. Families with many children often reach their spatial and financial limits when it comes to housing. Finally, Dr. Clemens Götz, former mayor, was able to report on his success with the expansion of a family center and the positive influence that the integration and use of existing facilities can have on making a municipality family friendly.
Before lunch, all speakers and additionally the mayor of Möhnesee, Maria Moritz, had the opportunity to summarize and discuss the most important points of their speeches in a panel discussion with the moderator Dr. Laura Schlichting.
After lunch, the event continued with two video messages from Sören Bartol, State Secretary in the Federal Ministry of Construction, and the CDU party leader and Sauerland resident Friedrich Merz, who also wanted to address the participants of the conference.
The Chairwoman of the large family association of Rhineland-Palatinate Claudia Siebner, M.A., who is also a local politician in Mainz, then summarized the study “Family friendliness in Germany” from Family Monitor No. 45. Particularly in the areas of housing, social security and compatibility of family and career, there is still a lot of room for improvement when it comes to “family friendliness” in Germany.
After a short coffee break, the latter three topics and the topics of education, leisure/culture and society were examined and discussed with the plenum in “World Café” mode. Six circles of chairs were formed on the various topics and the visitors to the conference rotated to the next topic every four minutes. This resulted in intensive discussions with arguments from the different perspectives of the families.
During the conference, the children of the participating families were able to build nesting boxes, make seed bombs, explore a climbing forest or simply play with many children of the same age in the extra childcare provided with the support of NABU Warstein. This inclusive childcare is an important feature of our conferences and enables parents to take part in an interesting and informative day in a relaxed manner.
