download - Deutsches Jugendinstitut e.V.

premises practical concepts have proved either to have been valuable or have
failed.
This approach meant that we were forced to try the patience of all conference
participants in advance with our request to consider these aspects in greater detail than is
normal. For this reason, I would particularly like to thank all of you who were nonetheless
willing to present your projects here and thereby contribute to the success of this
conference.
If against this background a somewhat prematurely attempt is undertaken to take initial
stock of the situation – in advance of the presentation of the workshops’ results – the first
impression is overwhelming. This is because a specific and extremely complex national
requirement structure has become visible behind all the projects presented. It was apparent
that we were confronted not only with problems and causes encountered by young persons
of an extremely heterogeneous nature, but also with strategies which could only be
understood within their relevant national context. This applied to a wide range of aspects:
the time horizons envisaged, how long it would take for long-term solutions to take effect,
the participation or non-participation of certain actors (e.g. schools), personal and financial
provision and effective political support, etc.
The presentations also provided an abundance of suggestions and situations which
prompted the review of our own practices. I would like to highlight two of these
presentations which particularly attracted my attention during my visits to the workshops,
but which perhaps reveal more about me or our discussion in Germany than about the
problems themselves. You may have drawn quite different conclusions from these
presentations.
• The Polish presentation which particularly focused on the problems of young
people in rural areas highlighted the fact that our own starting point – young
persons in disadvantaged urban districts – was from a youth welfare point of
view perhaps too narrow an approach. We could be in danger of neglecting the
less obvious problems of young people in rural areas which attracted
substantially less media coverage. This prompted me to recall that at the start of
the E&C programme in Germany, there was a specific module foreseen for
rural areas which was however not subsequently continued.
• The presentation of a project in the Czech Republic targeted at Sinti and Roma
families and young people was highly thought-provoking. The particular
challenge for experts was that the addressee group were non-settled. Projects in
Lithuania and England also involved young persons from this target group. At a
single blow, numerous elements otherwise taken for granted were challenged or
even became irrelevant (right up to the question of regular office hours). The
experiences of this project demonstrate that it is not a long way from here to
the problematisation of the debate on so-called social environmental
orientation, at least in the manner in which it is discussed in Germany – a
specialist principle based on numerous unexpressed integrated strategies – at
least in connection with several target groups.
You will all be able to quote similar examples.
From an abstract point of view, these examples could give rise to new complexities. While
the strategies presented in Berlin and Strasbourg were already intrinsically promising, the
106