Initiatives for establishing social cohesion in local communities

1. Youth empowerment and social cohesion
Comparative analysis of xenophobic and violent incidents in European societies shows a high diversity of complex situations, traditions and motivations. There is no simple explanation or remedy which can be generally applied.

But history and international comparison show also that racism, violence and extremism should not be considered in an isolated way. They are symptoms of wider and deeper disturbances in our societies. They appear where general social cohesion is at stake.
Many of the troops of violent xenophobic movements are recruited from young people at risk giving them an intense feeling of group identity and the provocative pleasure of being different and strong. They want to be scandalous. They want to be irrational. They want to turn their back to democracy. For evident reasons this type of people are simply not interested in learning about minorities and tolerance.

One thing seems obvious: without preventive action, without changing the social, economic and cultural environment and the way in which young people experience their society, many isolated educational efforts are condemned to be lost. Educational experiences have to be combined with broader initiatives for establishing new forms of social cohesion and offering for young people and for adults concrete possibilities of positive social interaction building sustainable forms of integration into a democratic society.

This can not be accomplished by general public policies or fragmented short time programmes. Social cohesion has to be established locally and experienced as a continuous work in progress in which young people at risk participate actively. In such a context democracy and tolerance are not subjects of abstract teaching but should be experienced as active elements of practical community building.

In the following I will present some elements and examples of a project which we are developing with a group of European and American foundations in the context of the Education and Youth Interest Group at the European Foundation Centre. This project is not dealing with xenophobia and violence alone. It’s title is YOUTH EMPOWERMENT AND SOCIAL COHESION. LEARNING FOR ACTIVE CITIZENSHIP. We are still in the preparatory phase but some of its approaches and examples may be of interest for the forum.

In this project special emphasis will be given on selected places where new holistic methods of community building for youth at risk are being analysed, developed and tested. Establishing exchange and synergy between them is creating high added value for innovation in this domain. We call them ‘Centres of High Intensity’.

2. Centres of high intensity
In order to be able to analyse concretely through case studies the impact of foundation initiatives on community building and local development in the domain of youth at risk the Co-operation Programme will concentrate its attention an a selected number of European cities where multidimensional approaches are particularly developed.
We call them ‚Centres of high intensity’ because they share three dimensions:

3. Centres of high intensity are communities / neighbourhoods / districts of cities / small towns / regions with crucial needs of youth at risk and of the community itself.
The term refers to the simultaneous presence of numerous social problems including changing family structures and welfare dependency, community desinvestment, poverty and unemployment, crime and violence, emergence of racism, xenophobia and antidemocratic extremism.

4. Centres of high intensity are places / sites / venues where already multifold interventions by the public, private and independent sectors are organised to address aspects of youth development and community renewal. Often these interventions are separated from each other and do not allow for a holistic approach.

5. In the operational definition of the action-research programme centres of high intensity are the innovative combination of interventions, the establishment of co-operation and partnership, the introduction of additional components of youth development, local economic and cultural development and community building promoting the implementation, evaluation and dissemination of integrated holistic bottom-up approaches towards sustainable youth empowerment and learning for active citizenship leading to social cohesion.

The programme will help:

• To make them known
In different European cities (such as Alverca, Antwerp, Eberswalde, Lille) holistic initiatives for Youth Empowerment and Social Cohesion already exist. Different specific projects and combined initiatives contribute in a relevant way to a joint strategy towards social cohesion and community building. But they are not sufficiently known.

• To learn from experience and to generate new initiatives
Other cities where strong foundation activities are developing could be encouraged to learn from these examples and to develop additional strategies of combined initiatives and community building. Exchange with similar programmes facilitates the transfer of knowhow. Shared experimentation and evaluation gives the pragmatic trial and error approach a higher relevance. In order to learn from experience, this will be properly analysed and discussed.

• To involve foundations active in Central and Eastern Europe and in the Balkans
Youth empowerment and social cohesion projects are numerous in the post-communist countries. The programme will learn from these experiences. In the Balkans, foundation activities in this domain are being developed in Bosnia and Kosovo. They should be recognised as centres of high intensity and integrated into the network.

• To build partnership with the European Commission
Common initiatives of the centres of high intensity could facilitate partnership and the selection of co-financed initiatives with the European Commission. By their participation in the network, small local initiatives can reach European relevance and support.

• To establish transatlantic dialogue and co-operation
Dialogue and exchange with American foundations will be intensified in order to benefit from the American experience in the domain of active citizenship, youth development and community building.

3. Selected examples of European cities
3.1 Alverca (Portugal)

Initial challenges:
Social integration of former rural population into a small industrial town. Immigration. Between 1960 and 1990 Alverca grew from 8 000 to 24 000 inhabitants.

Actual challenges:
Unemployment and poverty, immigration, youth at risk, drugs.

History and performance:
One of the most successful European examples of a Community Foundation for social assistance and local development can be found in Portugal. It has been created since 1968 by a local initiative. Rural population and immigrants were confronted with what were for them new problems of social integration; assistance in raising and educating their children proved to be their most urgent need, but public services were insufficient. A group of citizens around the Catholic parish, but independent of all religious or political groups decided to organise help on their own.

This began with establishing a crèche and a nursery school, organising mutual assistance between women and families, providing care for young people at-risk, medical and psychological assistance, fighting drug use and criminality, and prevention of violence. It led to the development of training programmes and apprenticeship for vocational education and professional integration. Today CEBI has 460 paid employees, many of them former pupils, and 75 volunteer workers. In its own modern buildings, it is running an impressive volume of services for 2 225 children and young people and 626 adults and elderly people in need. It provides a centre for social emergencies, two crèches, a nursery school, a primary school with the three levels for 750 children, a youth club, an old people’s home, mobile services for assistance at home, a day-centre for elderly people, and a centre for physiotherapy. The foundation publishes two newspapers.

With its community approach, and under the extraordinary human and entrepreneurial guidance of its founder and President José Alvaro Vidal CEBI is able to maintain its original character. It is, above all, a 2 8oo member local association where the poorest families continue to play an important role, despite the growth and the necessary professional management that this growth entailed.

3.2 Antwerp (Belgium)

Initial challenges:
Since the eighties, following structural change in industry and the port, unemployment and immigration became major problems in Antwerp. Drastic impoverishment occurred in certain districts of the city, such as the Northeast, with a high concentration of immigrants and other at-risk groups, the decline of skilled craftsmanship and the closure of many small cornershops. In 1993, 16 % of the active population were unemployed in this district, and only 63 % of the houses met minimum living standards.

Actual challenges:
Youth at-risk, unemployment, discrimination of immigrants, racism and political extremism.

History and performances:
In this situation, the existing small and highly fragmented social assistance initiatives proved to be insufficient. Two innovative institutions were created and co-operated in close partnership, BOM and VITAMINE W. Influenced by the European Union’s Poverty Programme and by the University of Antwerp an integrated group BOM (Buurtnontwikkelingsmaatschapij) was created to develop a new holistic approach to the cities problems. BOM considered poverty as a multi-dimensional problem and developed an holistic concept with the aspects of poverty considered in their inter-relatedness with, and their continuity through, the generations. BOM’s anti-poverty strategy concentrates on three action domains - housing, socio-cultural development and socio-economic development. In all these domains training and work experience are permanent instruments for facilitating social integration.
BOM is fully conscious of the fact that local economic strategies have to be seen in the context of regional planning, where BOM plays an active role.

BOM’s main socio-economic project is the creation of the Antwerp Technology Centre ATEC in 1991 and a new additional Business Centre. It focuses on the long-term unemployed and offers courses in PC technologies and administration, technical administration for immigrant women and a multi-media project to help people to set up their own business. The Business Centre attracts new investment and activities into the district. Additionally BOM has developed a work counselling programme. In housing projects, young school drop-outs gain first-hand technical knowledge by working on a real building site. Here they can also acquire elementary social skills such as time-keeping and the ability to follow instructions and work independently.

In order to reactivate the district’s cultural life BOM has created a local newspaper and a directory of socio-cultural organisations. In a programme called 37°North East working with young people, it has established a number of artistic workshops that are led by professionals. They lead mostly to some sort of performance - an exhibition, a play or a publication. VITAMINE W concentrates on the questions of work and training, co-operating closely and in an innovative way with the Flemish Employment Office (VDAB), the Local Centre for Public Welfare (OCMW) and other public and private institutions. It is now highly influential in Antwerp’s strategies against unemployment.

VITAMINE W co-ordinates existing projects, as well as developing projects of its own in areas such as training, information and counselling, and the social economy.
Typical of its projects is the Kringloopcentrum, a now highly attractive second-hand goods shop for Northeast Antwerp. Initially, the Kringloopcentrum was considered purely as a training project for low-skilled people and long-term unemployed. Participants received technical training in collecting, recycling and selling goods at a very low price in a poor part of the city. Soon it was transformed into a social economy project providing permanent jobs for 18 people. Kingloopcentrum pays much attention to the individual technical and social learning process, developing specific tasks according to abilities of the individuum.

Participants have an individual role leading them to become full members of the team. Changing mentalities is one of the main conditions for success.
VITAMINE W is developing similar projects with immigrant women, young unemployed etc. They are generally highly successful with a job creating rate of around 6o %. However, by themselves they constitute only a very small and expensive answer to the growing general unemployment rate. Their main significance is their pilot function in developing and testing new solutions. For example, VITAMINE W has contributed considerably in modernising Flemish employment and welfare policies. Its concepts of skills, mentality and team development are relevant for the general innovation of education and training.

3.3Lille (France)

Initial challenges:
High social tension and riots in certain districts of French cities due to immigration,
unemployment, social exclusion, criminality and violence.

Actual challenges:
Youth unemployment and youth at risk, social exclusion and discrimination of immigrants.

History and performance:
The fight against social exclusion was one of the main motivations for the rapid growth in activity of foundations and corporate founders since the early eighties. Fondation de France was highly active in promoting this type of fight against unemployment through economic activities that needed not only public and private subventions, but also managerial assistance. The main emphasis was given to social re-integration through work with non-profit companies called ‘Entreprises d’insertion’. New types of partnership had to be established between national authorities, local authorities, large and small companies, associations and the people. In the French context, this meant unusual combinations of private and public initiative.

FACE, created in 1993 by Martine Aubry (later French Minister of Work and Social Affairs) and a group of 15 leading French companies, is systematically developing the concept of partnership for developing projects, creating new jobs, and overcoming social exclusion.
FACE is not primarily active through financial assistance, but mobilises the know-how of its members and of local partners of all kinds, to revitalise selected urban environments in high risk suburbs. In these suburbs the situation is explosive with an advanced degree of social disintegration, particularly among young people.

FACE does not provide individual social assistance. It promotes, through very specific forms of local development, a global action for economic, social and cultural reactivation of these suburbs by trying to identify and to establish new opportunities for employment, mainly in commerce and services.

FACE realised early the key role of education and training. In its regional forum “Education et Exclusions” (Angoulême June 1995) the sociologist Claude Delaunay analysed the interactions between the different domains. This type of approach makes evident the importance of cultural elements for social cohesion and the psychological stabilisation of youth at risk. Training activities for unemployed are most intense in Lille. FACE operates together with companies known for their active corporate citizenship such as AXA, Auchan, Décathlon.

3.4 Eberswalde (Germany)

Initial challenges:
Racist violence in the post-communist context of East-German socio-economic crisis.

Actual challenges:
Growing right-wing extremism in a climate of racial discrimination and violence. High unemployment, youth unemployment and youth at risk.

History and performances:
Eberswalde is the place where, for the first time after German unification, an African immigrant Amadeu Antonio was killed in November 1990 for racist motives by young right wing extremists. Public reaction was intense (mostly in Western Germany) and first initiatives were developed fighting against this type of racism and developing preventive action. But as the scandalous growth of neonazi skinhead groups and this type of racist violence in the last decade proves, fragmented action has an important symbolic significance but is not sufficient to stop it and to prevent its complex reasons. In Eberswalde an new type of private-public partnership was developed between the RAA (Regional Associations for Questions Concerning Foreigners) and public authorities like the police and local immigration officers.

In 1998 an institutionalised Network was established co-ordinating the different activities such as ‘Civic courage’, ‘Violence in educational institutions’, ‘Fighting right wing ideologies’, ‘Public relations and internet’ and a multitude of attractive intercultural events for young people. In 1999 the Network represented by the president of police Mrs. Leichsenring received the Theodor-Heuss-medal and the Amadeu Antonio Foundation was created. For Eberswalde a new project centred around elementary education was created introducing concepts and methods of community education into the local structures. A study has been launched on the social and cultural conditions of right wing extremism in Eberswalde and on the evaluation of the Network’s initiatives.