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Information bulletin
(June 1951)
Anthon, Margaret Day
House of neighbors, pp. [20]-23
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Page [21]
youthful members of the Neukoelln house played a major part in bringing about its inception. A Youth Council works in conjunction with Adult Council and the two play an active role in the self-governing procedure used in the center. The contrast in ages that profit from and work for the project are shown in these photos of children (right), leaving after games and elderly members (below) dining. vited to speak, or one of the group read aloud to the rest, and always there were games or folk dancing or singing to leaven the earnestness. Fun was a rare luxury in those days, and one seldom heard laughter in the streets of Berlin. The serious-faced young German students would break off an evening of work and sober discussion to play even simple games with the abandon and glee of children. The first group of elderly neighbors - four little old ladies -came in one evening to ask if this was where they could get a cup of coffee from the Americans. When they learned that there was no coffee, but that the mayor of Neukoelln was to speak that evening, they reluctantly stayed and listened with interest to his history of how Neukoelln had grown from the village of Rixclorf to become one of the largest boroughs of Berlin, with a population of nearly 200,000 - as great as the city of Hanover. The four women returned on other evenings to watch the groups at work and help where they could. They enjoyed being around young people, and the group liked them so well that they staged a special Christmas party for elderly people in the neighborhood. G-RADUALLY, SLOWLY, THE CENTER began to take G the shape which had been projected by the board of directors. This board, consisting of 11 German men and women from various walks of life, chosen for their inletest in neighborhood work, came together first in August 1947. They helped and advised the German YWCA staff, and the representative sent by the YWCA of the United States, on all plans and drafted a state- menl of purpose and constitution for the new neighbor- hood house. The first plans for the center had been laid in 1946, when the German YWCA had asked the YWCA of the United States to assist in rebuilding the work in Ger- many which since 1933 had been carried on within and in Spite of the strict limitations imposed by the Nazis. As one of three projects of assistance, it was decided to set up a demonstration service center in Berlin to experiment with new methods of group and community woik A grant from Church World Service to the YWCA financed the start of the project. It was not to be a transplanted American pattern, but was to be adapted to the peculiar sociological conditions and the needs of the community and developed along modest lines that could be continued by the German YWCA as soon as financial support from abroad was no longer possible. Neukoelln was chosen as the most likely borough in the US Sector of Berlin because it had the greatest density of population, the highest proportion of youth, and more than its share of delinquency, crime and broken homes. JUNE 1951
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