Great recognition for the Erlangen Seniors' Advisory Council

With the beginning of the war in Ukraine, many refugees also came to Erlangen, especially women with children and older people. As citizens of Erlangen, they became the target group of the Senior Citizens' Advisory Council, which looks after people aged 60+.

It was clear to the committee from the outset that it had to take action and make offers. They immediately thought about what needed to be done. Younger people make contact with each other relatively quickly, children go to school or kindergarten. But the older ones?

Since it was founded on 5 April 2022, the senior citizens' café in the Catholic parish of St. Heinrich has been a meeting place for everyone, an exchange forum, a market for ideas, a generator for initiatives, a starting point and destination for excursions, a center of spirituality for devotions on church holidays, a place of help and encouragement, a stage for singing together, supported jointly by the senior citizens' advisory board, the St. Heinrich senior citizens' working group and the St. Heinrich helper group. A unique institution in the whole of Erlangen with a good 80 regular guests who are constantly being joined by new ones, and from whose ranks new groups are formed, where people cook together or form language tandems.

An exemplary approach to facilitating integration for refugees on a voluntary basis has been created here, radiating out to the entire city society - and deserves to be awarded the Rotary Prize. Ludmila Filipska from Kharkiv expressed it herself in German: "We thank you all!"

Text: Peter Steger