"Consolidating community building in ""public living rooms"""

"<< Background >>We applied for this project as a follow up of the ""Support the Supporters"" action that the German and Slovak partners started in march 2022 as a response to the war. The Slovak mother centers were doing the best they could to provide support to the refugees from Ukraine, many of whom were mothers of young children. The “public living rooms”, or self help community centers in which the refugees landed, were providing direct, practical and personal support. It was exactly what the people fleeing the war needed. They found a ‘home away from home’ and would like to take the concept back, once they returned. The needs that were formulated to follow up on the crisis response, were many: “How to pass on knowledge about the public living room to the Ukrainian Mothers” for example. But also, “how to consolidate the practical knowledge of the self help parent groups” and “how to reflect on the process taking place in the public living room” . We applied in short, in order to deepen our understanding of the underlying concepts of the public living room, to be able to discuss that and pass it on.<< Objectives >>By implementing the project, we wanted to contribute to the establishment and sustainability of “public living rooms”, as local self managed spaces, where community building, empowerment and informal learning takes place. We had three main overall objectives. We wanted to ..:A) .. make knowledge on the functioning of public living rooms accessibleB) .. improve the quality of adult education in public living rooms C) .. assure continuity in the organizational process of public living rooms << Implementation >>We have worked on a grassroots toolbox called “ich bin Clara” that the Germans have developed. We looked how it could be applied in other countries. For this we studied and translated “the nine dimensions of the public living room"". The five partners each adopted two of these dimensions and lead the conversation about them. These content discussions took place in work meetings in four of the five partner countries.The nine dimensions and their division over the work meetings and partners were: NL – “Learning space” – activity 1 (+project management)SK – “Community” and “Food & Drink – activity 3CZ – “Care” and “Space – activity 4HU – “Self-care” and “Participation – activity 6DE – “Diversity” and “Connectedness – activity 8We also organised three coaching tours in three countries. Here the method of working with the dimensions was tested in cooperation with different local community groups. Finally all partners organised dissemination activities.We did 9 activities in total:1) Start off work meeting2) Coaching tour Slovakia3) Work meeting Slovakia4) Midterm Work meeting in Prague5) Coaching tour Hungary6) Work meeting Hungary7) Coaching tour Germany8) End meeting in Stuttgart, Germany9) Dissemination<< Results >>Our 3 objectives translated into the following results:A) We have analyzed the 9 aspects of how community organizing in a public living room functions. As a concrete output of this, we now have the summarised agreed definition of the 9 dimensions available in six translations in addition to German, notably in Czech, Dutch, English, Hungarian, Slovak and UkrainianB) We have studied, tested, and discussed the evaluation questions on each of the 9 dimensions. As a concrete output of this we have the 9 sets of questions translated in the six languages mentioned above. In some instances we adapted questions of the original set of German questions.C) We have thought out ways to assure that public living room organizers can pass on their wisdom and we have a better cooperation and networking between our organizations. As a concrete output of this, we have formulated a follow up project, because we realised that there is much more we can do with the materials we created in this project (The follow up project is “Understanding the 9 dimensions of a public living room” number 2024-2-NL01-KA210-ADU-000292939)"