 So, willkommen zurück hier auf der Lichtung des RC3. Okay, willkommen zurück zu der Ex-Hine, Ex-Base. Der Tor, den wir hier haben, ist der Tor, um zusammen zu arbeiten, oder zusammen zu arbeiten. Also, wir haben Ex-Base hier in Berlin, Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg und einmal in Brandenburg direkt um die Ecke, und Cabrinha-Pyramid. Also, wenn Sie Fragen zu dem folgenden Tor haben, please use Twitter or Macedon, or ideally using the hashtag RC3XHIN, X-H-A-I-N, or use the ISC-Channel, where it will be connected, collected, then we can answer them without further ado, the stage series. Thank you very much. So, I will begin. I'm very happy to be here today. And I want to talk about, I'm happy to talk about the topic, acting together, digital volunteering in the city and on, in the countryside. So, the two of you are working and operating in the countryside and in the city, and that's very special. So, we have a foundation in Neustrelitz, and we want to help with that. It's relatively new. We exist for one and a half years now, and one year ago I was able to talk with Daniel here, and we were freshly baked, so to say, and it became more stabilized. So, our foundation, that's a collaboration of three ministries, and so voluntary work is very important for the government, and they spend a lot of money on this, so we can create structures to support around 30 million people and 30 million Euro. You can calculate that it's not much money for each one, and we are looking for levers. And with those two speakers, I think we found partners who live it every day with their voluntary work and volunteer work. I don't know how many hours you work per month, and we will get to that, I guess. But some words to the foundation, about the foundation. Our job is to support voluntary work, be it sports, or sport clubs, or firefighters everywhere in the country. But what is important for us as well, and what was included in our CARTA as well, is to work with, so we are working with 2.500 organizations, and we were helping them with digitization. And some very nice projects were created, and we want to continue with that. And we want to talk about what is necessary for the future, not only programs, but also what can we do for a more digital volunteering, and for the digital public. How can we create a framework for that? And we would like to see your perspectives, and maybe there's differences, maybe there's commonalities. So Felix, what made you create the X-Sign? You're in the middle of Berlin, and Berlin is a weak region as well. So, maybe tell us what your target was, and your goal was with this. Who maybe be surprised, but the original reason for creating X-Sign was very egotistical. I wanted to learn all the cool stuff that I couldn't do. 3D printing, learning a new programming language, and I am completely unable to learn alone at home. YouTube books, not my thing, I learn by doing. And in that moment I thought, okay, well, then I need a space where I can go, and where other people can assemble, who know how to do all the cool stuff. And it didn't exist in that moment. Not in my area at least. So, I decided to just open one. So, I learned a lot of stuff. I didn't learn in the programming language, but a lot of other things. But I also realized quickly that I'm not the only one who prefers to not learn things alone at home. But a lot of people really are looking for a space where they have the option to talk or maybe find machines that they don't have at home or are not allowed to use because it's too loud or too much dirt. And I realized that if you take care and you really try, you can reach a lot of people and make those people very happy. And if you can make people happy because they can do things that you wanted them to do there, then that's very satisfying. And for me, that's most of my free time to take care of the Exile. It's five and a half years now. I have a few hundred members now. Grew up to 200 square meters, expanded to the house next door. And we are thinking, well, maybe we could need, we could use a lot, a bit more space. So there is a real need for this opportunity to work statistically, technologically and exchange opinions. And here we are in the middle of Berlin, but there is not that many great places for this. And that was the way why I'm still working on this and why I really don't want to think about stopping. It's a great example for what voluntary work can do. Just do something because you want to learn something, to create something. And a few hundred members you have that also shows that there is a need. But what role, if I can ask the question, is the topic voluntary work and honorary work? You said you spend a lot of time in the space. But what about the others? I read that you have mentors. Are those volunteers as well? Do they start projects? Yes. So everything is done by volunteers. Right now we don't have one person who gets paid. Everyone does it in their free time. So the whole space without volunteers would not be possible. Yes, there is people here who spend more time than others. And they also welcome others and take it upon themselves to do this. And also make it easier, take their fear of new people. So if someone doesn't like being there, they're east into it. And we orientate ourselves with the Chaos Mentors called Chaosparten and Chaospartinnen. And we provide them introduction. Because if you don't take care of your newbies and if you don't welcome them, then you die quickly as a community. That's very important. And as I mentioned, nobody gets paid. All voluntary work. And voluntary work. And where I come from with the Mentors and Godfathers is the direct translation for the Gemterm. It was great. And Daniel, you are not in a million people city. So you created the half a lab as a club. And how did you come from? Well, our reasoning was similar. Well, similar to Felix, at least. So B came out here in 2011. And before that, I spent 15 years in similar cities. Berlin was the last. And there was always a club or something. Alpha is the German term for the Chaos Clubs. We have always met. Out here there was nothing. I was really missing it. In Fürstenberg. I like living here, but that was the only downside. Such a place didn't exist. So nothing where people who were sharing my interests could meet. So there was this intrinsic motivation for me und also for myself. Also around me. For other people, no such offers existed for young people. And I was very engaged in Chaos. Makes school. And I noticed that right here, out here, the reality is quite different. When compared to the maybe more modern or hip schools in Berlin or in a city where there are small offers for young people. And like that, it was quite natural for us that we said we want to create this place also for young people. So they can enter and it fulfills a need. And also it's all volunteer work. Last year we had someone who got paid aus ihrem Job by the government. But she also returned to freedom and is now doing volunteer work at the Congress. She's on the other side of the camera now. Yeah, it's all about volunteer work and that's a nice thing about it. I really like it. They have a different motivation. They have different goals. There's nobody here who just does their job enters in the morning because they get paid and they have to be here. But people who are here, who help here also with completely crazy projects are new ideas that we have. Everyone is here because they want to be. And that's a completely different kind of work. All of that sounds great. But I know how it is with motivation. There are problems as well. What would you say your challenges are? Would you say there are differences? What you are doing is quite similar. But you do it in different places, in different areas. So what are your challenges? To recruit, for example. So they have a lot of bureaucracy as well. So you have two different kinds of organization. But you have challenges as well. Or is it finances? Because you can get government money. So maybe let's talk about this situation as well. Ja, maybe let me shortly comment. One of our challenges is finding people. I put a lot of thought into how do I measure the success of our initiative. We gave ourselves a schedule of three years to see whether it's worth it keeping up this place and investing all this work. And then we asked ourselves, how do we measure the value? What kind of KPIs can you use? Because our sponsors, of course, want to have KPIs. Like, for example, how many young people visit our place. And here in the rural areas, there's not many young people. So it's complicated. For young people to reach us. And for those who do visit us, this was exactly the space they were missing. We have young people here who have their own key for the place and who visit at least once a week. And then, well, they have their parents get them to the place by car. Because they live in a tiny village where there's no stimulation otherwise. So for those young people, this offer is extremely valuable and it makes a huge difference in their lives. Or at least that's what I hope. And at the same time, in the medium term, you have to look into how this continues. And we put a strong focus on cooperation with schools. We have three school groups where kids can come to us after school. And it's all primary students. So between third and sixth grade. So in the medium term, I think that there will be a larger target group for our place. And that this will continue to develop and grow in a way that I couldn't even plan if I tried to. So this is the one side. And on the other hand, everything that is related to bureaucracy is always difficult. I'm not a paper tiger. I hate paperwork. I could use for useful activism and volunteerism. And unfortunately, I haven't found anyone who would be willing to take those tasks from me. So far we haven't found anyone so that's a struggle. So Felix, what are your challenges and how do you overcome them? Yeah, we also have a people problem. Maybe not in the same way as in Thurstenberg, that there's a lack of people and they're glad to have like five people turn up regularly. It's more about because here we have something like a hobby room, like a hobby basement where we can have a window bread elsewhere. So it's difficult to organize regular workshops. That's really challenging. And also the administrative overhead of course is large. I'm happy that we have two people to tackle these tasks at the moment. So I don't have to do it all alone. It's the classical problem of any kind of volunteering or activism on limited space. It would be easier to have workshops for a school if you had more space. But even though we have 200 square meters on two different floors, we would like the space to have a whole school class come over. So we have more spatial restrictions than Daniel probably has in the rural areas. And still the kids that come to us also spent more than half an hour to get to us because it's difficult to attain space because it's expensive here in Berlin in Friedrichshain, which is a very central quarter of Berlin. And we couldn't move because we have to pay our rent and we're paid responses and we also have to reach a set of locations and of course we need donations and to pay for a new location in Berlin that would be the biggest challenge we see at the moment. Otherwise we would need more workshops to get more people to our place and make them happy. So, maybe let me jump in here. There might have been a misunderstanding. We do have regular offers where we have between 20 and 25 young people who come once a week reliably. And in addition to that we also have school class classes. We also had classes at a camping site or somewhere else outside so. This isn't really a problem that we don't have enough people but the metrics just differ in the countryside because there's just less people about the rent one thing is very important something that we're missing is structural funding it's really easy it's comparatively easy to get funding like for example I tell them I have this new project and this idea to acquire funding because many organizations want to fund new things but it's really difficult to get regular funding and long term funding and this isn't just in our sector but it's all across the volunteering in Germany and we really have to reflect also this is not something that our society should wish for that not just football but also other societal activities should be funded publicly and to have structural funding that would be really, really important to us so it's not about funding 100 new things but to have structural funding in the long term yeah we also as a foundation we are still bound yearly budgets this is not our own invention it's just like that but we have structural funding in our basic guidelines this is something we want to do so as a follow up question we want to build structures so that we have a broad target group maybe this is something we can think about together how to achieve that because the coalition agreement also says that activism and volunteerism should be supported and promoted so we need good structural funding what we do is we invest in restoration of buildings and also we invest in things that work like your spaces and we want to do structural funding also get involved there is not just state funding but there is also funding by the local communities so just as a question to you your district do they support you no we haven't applied for funding from the district we have funding for organizations for associations locally but it's not much it just barely covers our fixed costs and we just kept that as a backup if we really need it it would be like the a-scenario sleeve but it's really complicated to file for this kind of funding and you can't die certain projects before they've received approval and this is why we haven't used that option or haven't tapped into those funds yet but it's clear to us that this place has an additional value we just wanted to create this place independently so we didn't so we don't have to discuss and do all of the application filing and bureaucracy so we just wanted to get into it and get started and then later see how to acquire more government funding yeah, it's similar for us we don't get any money from our community or our municipality and we are and at the beginning I did it as a business and just from 2019 it's a non-profit and at the beginning there was no option of funding and I didn't dare ask for money because during the first lockdown every contact to the city of Berlin was not very nice so we were amongst the first to produce face shields and we tried everything to access the state administration to maybe get some money to do more and to do it faster but for weeks we were just ignored so until finally we got an answer and that was yeah, you want some masks what is it supposed to cost and we said no we want to distribute them and then they answered no volunteer work is not relevant for funding and that was it so we tried for weeks using all possible channels to make contact and you could read on twitter that the ministers really like our work and it should be supported in the end we didn't get one center or a thank you and that didn't really motivate us to apply for money thanks for the open works the talks topic is working together and you're acting fast also with the face shields was it something that you developed together or were the other makerspaces involved want to tell about that I want to say developed together it's difficult to say because there were versions we exchanged but in the end, here in AXEIN some people already started sewing masks from cloth and then someone asked yeah I need someone so was the doctor in Berlin with face shields and half an hour later we had the first print on the 3D printer and then afterwards the development not the face shields but incorporation with the cutters we also brought in more face shields and face masks and cloth masks and distributed them so we set up a network but we did not develop the face shields yeah I also would say that especially the thing with the face shields that was a real success story how a few open workshops mostly in Brandenburg and we have a network of open workshops and those spaces are really different from each other and they are well distributed and together with AXEIN, CAROS and Beut University in Berlin we worked together and within 5 weeks we went from a distributed 3D printing we went to industrial pressure mold plastics and we distributed a lot of those at the end I sent something to the Congo so that was a great example how everyone in their free time within a pandemic within lockdown were able to create something together but the market really couldn't do so I think it's a great example for what becomes possible I also think that's a great example for how acting together works and also how motivation works and how much faster and more creative it can be and that needs to support and governmental politics and funding should change and do you have further ideas that it could be more and longer that's obvious I was working for a foundation that had to do fundraising themselves so I know the topic and sometimes it makes sense for certain fundings to just start things and that's necessary as well of course but on the other side if there is something effective and something that works and when something like the face shields where people come together and it works and you can help what would you wish for such projects for political funding also for digital volunteering what do you think is necessary for the public around digital projects in voluntary areas gets and gets better acceptance and of course doesn't have to be justified anymore Freifunk for example is something where official sites understood that this can be nonprofit but it doesn't benefit and what we do in our free time here is also something so it's not just some obscure technical thing where people program something and do video conferencing or something that this becomes obvious that this really gets accepted as volunteer work and on the other side it's a personal wish of mine that there is something like a voluntary digital year there is the social year, there is the ecological year there is the volunteer service of the state but we want something for people who have a technical affinity especially people between the school so we want something that makes sense that we give them the option to do something more technical and I think that way we could create an API a connection point to also get more digital competence and clubs that do something really different and don't really work with digitalization but they do social work and work with them with volunteer work and give them technical competences that way and maybe they can manage to step into the future that way because how do we support them here every day we have the same situation every week at least that some old club just exchange photos and all other people have the same thing and a volunteer year for digital topics could work here yeah there was a pilot project 2015 to 2020 but they tried something like that with the German Red Cross had a digital service but that's not what you are suggesting the new government has decided to make this stronger and written that down and we got a lot of applications where people really wanted small and little things and help for digital topics so what you are describing is really important Felix what would you wish for for a support politics that's more future oriented and that would help you with what you are doing yeah of course supporting structure and structural funding would be great so it would be great for a money in december that has to be spent by the end of the year that would be good that we have more time and more less stress but especially for digital topics I would wish to involve more kids and teenagers so I would like to stress that it's not just programming there is also 3D printing laser cutting, digital arts so it's a mix of digital topics and almost handiwork and tradecraft and that's something I really want for kids and teenagers as well because I had tradecraft as a school subject and today I don't think that exists anymore because in school you have no connection point with it and I would wish that we have a communal maker space it's supported by the municipality also financially also financially and it should be seen as an educational space and all students should spend some time there and you could learn woodworking and just take something in your hands and do something that you can't do at school and I don't think you could expect all the schools to build it up themselves because it's a lot of work to have a maker space and to run a maker space and yeah, the teachers also are not especially for technology so they don't expect teachers who studied some other topic that they next to their job also learn about these topics so they can manage a club so a solid financed communal maker space also for adults but with a focus on teenagers yeah, that sounds good because this is not something an association can do alone but you need a lot of stakeholders so it's not just about having model projects funded by the federal government but the communal districts also have to chip in so what we do in communities is also we do counselling especially with a focus on open source projects that are very dependent on voluntary work and something I can recommend you to I don't know if you do that work together with volunteer organisations especially Berlin has a lot of such organisations or maybe a tap into the community here in order to search for volunteers I don't know if you've ever worked with such structure but if those topics that are important to you just contact us and we will help you where we can not just financially but also with counselling now I would like to ask if there's any questions from the audience yeah, there is but in my opinion it was suggested that schools and other public organisations could give make spaces free rooms would that be a possibility and how would you approach that yeah, with the spatial situation that's also not so good for schools in Berlin but in some primary schools in Berlin it would be very difficult to find a free space that isn't planned for use anywhere else well generally I don't think this is a bad idea if there is free space of free room opening them up for people would be a very good possibility to share the benefits so but as was said before you can't really expect teachers to run make spaces at school maybe you could get people to the schools and get them closer to the students this is something I could imagine but I'm not sure whether we live in a time where schools still have free space available even out here in the countryside it's a nice concept because it would open up the possibilities for students to do some of the organisation and themselves yeah, that sounds really good and this would be a way to connect target groups that might be very appreciative yeah, I know that there's a lot of discussion about creating room for voluntary work because often networks aren't created so there's a lot of interconnection in the village and a lot of exchange but still there's a lack of control centres but there's a lot of bars in villages that are empty that are not in use and they could be turned into into communal spaces in order to promote voluntary work in rural spaces I can recommend train stations it's the perfect place in a lot of aspects the German railways are selling a lot of those spaces right now so, that's a possibility but Felix don't cities also have open spaces or abandoned spaces like former shopping centres yes but those aren't really used otherwise so, you have that kind of old rundown mall im Rad ist ja etliche ein die ich sofort in den Küken gehört in eine Herrschaft verwandeln könnte ja, ich habe viele Ideen um die Spaces zu machen ich würde gerne das machen aber das Problem ist, dass die Gebäude nicht in der Stadt gelangt sie sind nicht in der Stadt und das macht es sehr schwierig also, die spatialen Probleme ist ein sehr großes Problem es würde immer besser sein was ich finde interessant Daniel, dein größtes Problem ist die Distanz, wie die Menschen um dich zu ermöglichen und Felix, für dich das ist ein sehr langsamer Versuch für die Menschen, die für eine halbe Jahre einen Kurs geben und beide of you können die Menschen, die mehr in die administrativen Seite sind und helfen können vielleicht haben wir hier jemanden in der Audienz, der mit dir interessiert ist es da etwas, was du möchtest zu erwähnen, in den digitalen Volunteering und in der nächsten Legislaturperiode ich wollte sagen, dass wir jetzt 200 offene Positionen für die Volunteer haben also, wenn du einen halben Jahr in Fürstenberg und uns helfen zu definieren du bist willkommen, uns zu kontaktieren und auch in den nächsten vier Jahren und in der neuen Legislaturperiode müssen wir einen Augenblick haben auf das, was das Ehrenamt gestärkt werden soll die Digitalen Volunteering wir haben uns gefordert und unterstützt so, ja, wir müssen die neuen Kommissionen im Fall was sie für die öffentlichen und kommunalen Spaces machen und ich hoffe, dass ihre Commitment real ist und dass wir auf den Entspannungsweg statt der Entspannung aus dieser Bälle der Erdung sind, die wir jetzt haben ja, es gibt nicht viel, was ich adde ich am Ende dieses Legislaturperiode ich würde gerne zu sprechen noch warm über die Berlin-Administration Danke euch both of you sehr viel für die Commitment und auch für eure Arbeit für unsere Gesellschaft und danke euch für all of those who listened und vielen Dank wenn es anything you want to know about volunteer work we're happy to help you ja, thank you for hosting this talk it's really important your work also so keep it on thank you it's really important for all of you for having this wonderful discussion round I can only say thank you to the three of you for having this wonderful discussion round