Our mission statement

was created in 2014.

It was jointly developed by all members and employees of the association in a “collaborative design” and adopted by our highest body – the general assembly.

Who we are

SoBi is a grassroots democratic association that values solidarity and collective cooperation.

We build on the strengths and individual abilities of each and every person involved.

In order to shape the community, we promote critical engagement with society in order to develop alternatives in the areas of politics, culture, education and training. Our aim is to create a broad culture of participation that allows us to work together as equals.

We support social efforts and organisational processes that hold freedom, equality, voluntariness and openness as basic values. We see ourselves in the age of enlightenment and are not bound to any party or denomination.

Our values and principles

We consider every human to be a subject of himself.

We are appreciative and in solidarity.

In our work we attach great importance to transparency and the principle of consensus.

Self-organisation and self-administration are our basis.

We are committed to commitment and reliability.

We enable participation with regard to a critical view of society that strives for a balance between social, ecological, economic and cultural aspects.

Our mission

Soziale Bildung e. V. sees its strength in the synergy of child, youth, social, cultural and educational work.

Our mission to shape our work is self-chosen and self-determined.

In all areas of work we pursue the peaceful and just coexistence of all people. We support efforts that aim towards a democratic, social and emancipatory shaping of the community in our area of activity.

Goals of our (educational) mission

• Enabling and supporting people to act in a self-determined manner and according to humanistic values
• Conveying values that build on “togetherness“ instead against each other
• reduction of social, cultural, economic or environmental discrimination
• a constant, responsible and purposeful involvement in social and political life and work
• critical questioning of social processes and communication of these to our addressees, taking into account their individual perspectives
• responsible handling of our mission for future generations
• empowering and promoting self-determined, competent and participatory action in everyday social life

Our target group

Our target group lies in all age groups, depending on the area of work.

Since our mission is self-chosen, voluntary action is a basic requirement for our target group.

The first step in any collaboration is to professionally understand and name the common goals and wishes and to jointly find suitable implementation strategies.

Our (cooperation) partners

Our partners include people from public and civil life who support our mission statement. The broad spectrum includes individuals, associations, schools and networks, as well as government offices.

Our work is supported and strengthened by valuable representative work.

 

Educational understanding of Soziale Bildung e.V.

General political understanding of education

According to our general understanding, political education has the task of enabling individuals and groups to participate in the political community. For this to succeed, it requires the promotion, reflection and mediation of:

• knowledge about the social and political system
• attitudes and behaviour
• action and shaping skills

Since political life takes place at different levels of society, there is a need for adequate forms of teaching and promoting political education, depending on that level. In our political education programmes, the focus is on forms of political education that relate to the context of the respective target group and the resulting practical relevance for action in the community. In the course of this orientation, our political education offers also aim at reflections on apparently apolitical influences on consciousness and behaviour that influence socialisation. In the following, we will explain the relevant contexts of the understanding of education and the educational work of the state-recognised provider of further education, Soziale Bildung e.V.

Four main contexts can be identified as:

1. ethical context
2. time context
3. practical context
4. discourse context

 

Ethical context: the image of man as a prerequisite for the guidelines of our work and the choice of pedagogical means. In our understanding, education has the task of promoting and constituting emancipated people

1. Following this basic understanding, we want to create educational opportunities that promote equal opportunities and democratisation. There is no single way to do this. Rather, it is a matter of perceiving the diversity of possibilities, approaches and views and presenting, processing and communicating them in an appropriate form. Central points of reflection for the development and implementation of our educational offers are:

• Orientation towards human rights
• Taking the perspective of those affected
• Lifestyle orientation
• Orientierung at the everyday mind

On the one hand, our educational offers are based on currently existing emancipatory elements in the thinking and acting of individuals and groups. Thereby our educational offers are aimed at:

• Knowledge expansion for individual and collective competence enhancement through sensitisation, deepening, differentiation and specialisation and promotion of communication processes for the establishment and effectiveness of rational understanding, cooperation and networking.

On the other hand, our educational offers should stimulate the search for risks for and restrictions of the free development of emancipated people, to make them clear and to find possibilities for change. This should work through:

• Knowledge transfer
• Promotion of critically reflective analysis and attitudes and
• Development and promotion of alternative ways of working, living, communicating and organising.

 

Time context: Reference to the past and present as a prerequisite for the content orientation and design of our educational offers.

Our commitment to education has set itself the goal of incorporating current developments and their historical references in terms of content and to use appropriate methods and didactics to deal with them. This results in two interlinked main features of our educational work. On the one hand, the cultures of remembrance that can be found on the different levels of social coexistence are chosen as the starting point for educational offers. Collective memory is anchored in respective memory cultures, which contain the contexts of origin, transformation and legitimation of democratic, civilisational and humanistic standards of social coexistence. These must be made visible and available for educational work. In this way, individual and public awareness and knowledge of the social construction of social history and forms of social coexistence can be strengthened, and therefore the resulting understanding of one’s own role as a practical constructor in social development trends and one’s own everyday life, can be activated. In addition, we pay special attention to current social developments and upheavals and pursue the goal of critically reflecting the social transformation processes in our educational programmes, which can be subsumed under many terms such as information, knowledge, communication, media, service, civil and investment society, pluralisation, individualisation, migration, Europeanisation and globalisation, in order to provide the target groups of our educational work with supportive offers for locating themselves or groups in a changing world. Therefore, our educational offers reflect the necessity of constant learning and change, as well as the preservation and constant confirmation of democratic, civilisational and humanistic standards of social coexistence.

Practical context: practical construction of social reality.

We understand forms of social coexistence as those that result from the practical reactions of its members to specific historical problems. Social reality at its various levels is based on the concrete actions of people who act on the basis of their changing needs and interests and thus also change reality. In the various forms of social coexistence, individuals are able to develop versatile common practices in order to shape social reality and to develop a common complex, practical and theoretical understanding of this reality. Reality and consciousness stand together in a lively, active relationship. For individuals to be able to play their own role as creators of their social reality, an understanding of the ways and means as well as the agreement of common goals is necessary. These prerequisites, which can be subsumed under the concept of action competence, are essential starting points of our educational work, the ultimate goal of which is to promote participants to become self-sufficient and self-determined participants in all aspects of their interest orientation.

Discourse context: communicative rationality and free agreement

According to the understanding of the educational institution, educational processes are essentially communication processes. For this reason, dealing with forms, structures and disorders of communication occupies a central position in all educational programmes. According to our view of humanity, we assume that individuals are able to reach agreements through communication that enable them to pursue their interests without restricting the interests of others. Therefore, communication has the function of balancing and mediating interests. In addition, individuals have the opportunity to agree on common interests arising from common social positions. On the basis of this communicative understanding they are able to develop common forms of practice, which enables them to find more efficient ways of asserting their interests than attempts to go it alone. The aim of our educational offers is to promote the communicative competence of the participants so that they are able to:

• Articulate their interests competently,
• Communicate conflicts of interest independently,
• Understand common interests as the basis for joint action,
• Develop efficient ways of enforcing interests,
• Independently analyse communication problems and find suitable solutions.

In addition, all educational offers start from public discourses relevant to the specific topic of the educational offer, they adopt them and then reflect them critically. This ensures, on the one hand, that the topicality and the relevance to the present of our educational offers and, on the other hand, the reference to the everyday life of our addressees. Furthermore, scientific discourses represent our primary relevance structure for content-related, but also methodological-didactic approaches in educational work. This ensures the professionalism of our educational work and, simultaneously, the undogmatic, pluralistic design of educational programmes.

 

Principles of political education work

Everyday life orientation

The educational offers are based on the lifeworld or everyday life of our target groups, i.e. the structure of direct life experiences that provides orientation and security. We understand everyday life as a place where individuals and groups are considered competent to solve their problems independently and to develop and realise their self-determined perspectives. The content design as well as the methodical and didactical implementation of the educational offers should reflect the closeness to the real-life reality and needs of our target groups. The addressees of our educational offers are recognized and strengthened as competent subjects, by the fact that the stubborn interpretation patterns and coping strategies of the subjects are taken seriously in everyday life and are used as a starting point for educational offers.

 

Independent judgment

When designing educational offers, learning objectives are formulated which are oriented towards the self-activity and personal responsibility of the addressees. For this purpose, suitable forms of developing the ability to argue, judge and criticise are applied. The autonomy of the addressees is in the foreground, i.e. individual, social and political self-location is the focus of the educational work. Maturity and autonomy, as well as the right of every human being to be able to determine his or her own goals and values in life, are considered to be self-evident and worthy of support. The addressees of the educational offers should be enabled to analyse a social or political situation and their own interests, as well as to get to know ways and means to influence the existing social and political situation.

Controversy

Our understanding of education also derives the versatility and openness of our educational offers from the complexity of the world we live in, the associated existence of the most diverse horizons of experience, but also from the heterogeneity of public and scientific discourses. The educational content should be highlighted in a pluralistic way. The social controversy of the interpretation of social developments and proposals for shaping them should be reflected in educational offers, compared and weighed up with the help of independent assessment. The multi-perspective approach can, among other things:

• unconditionally include different views of the participants
• point out interdisciplinary references
• include and present the various interests on a topic.

Interest orientation

The educational offers should reflect the interests, needs and demands of structurally disadvantaged groups, show structures of disadvantage and delegitimize blame, projections and resentments. Disadvantaged groups should be supported and accompanied by educational programmes. Our educational offers are generally understood as help for self-help. Part of the offers are oriented towards existing groups of subcultural and ethnic minorities. They are affected in their everyday lives by a specific life situation, which is often characterised by marginalisation and socio-economic, cultural and political segregation. This is reflected in their way of living, working and organising. We support and accompany such groups through practical advice and empowerment in their self-organisation practice. The educational offers concentrate on the transfer and improvement of skills for rotating members and representatives.

Partisanship

Educational offers of the association have neither the claim to neutrality nor to universality. The attitudes and value orientations of the participants in the educational institution are not regulated or faded out, but are, just like the attitudes and value orientations of the participants, a transparent and desired component and factor in the design of educational offers and a prerequisite for an authentic relationship between educational providers and addressees.

Addressee orientation

Our educational offers should start where the addressees are. This requires a design of the educational offers that is appropriate to the reality of life, the situation, the level of education and knowledge. It is important to involve the addressees already in the run-up to the actual educational situation by coordinating the complexity of content, methodology and didactics, etc. The orientation towards the addressee is continued in the educational situation, in which the design sovereignty of the educational providers can give way to cooperative forms of design.

Problem and solution orientation

The living world in its partial aspects, such as the world of work, group life, the community, the leisure area etc. represents the identifiable place of problems, alienation and discrimination, but at the same time also the place of usable potentials and resources for solving problems, creating and promoting transparency, perspectives and alternatives. These tangible potentials and resources are to be identified, activated and used in a self-determined way.

Specimen

The content of the educational offers uses an appropriate level of complexity. Thus, thematically relevant contexts are presented and related in an exemplary manner in order to:

• to preserve the vividness for the participants,
• to be able to offer possibilities of independent exemplary-discussive development and
• to be able to represent holistic connections nevertheless.

The examples are selected in a way that they are understandable for the participants, offer possibilities of identification and have practical meaning.

Science orientation

Those involved in the educational institution constantly reflect on their personal prerequisites and possibilities within the professional frame of reference, which is made up of the relevant disciplines. The continuity of the reference to subject areas such as political science, sociology, educational science and educational psychology is on the one hand an important criterion for securing and expanding the subject matter and, on the other hand, for ensuring the quality of the education provided. On the other hand, the professionalism of the educational providers guarantees the objectivity and quality of the content of the educational offers. In this way, current developments can, among other things, flow into the scientific discourse as innovative impulses and be made useful.

Actuality

The planning, content conception and implementation of educational offers is oriented towards current socio-political developments. Our events react to these developments in a timely manner and enable the addressees to evaluate their significance and impact on their interests and interests.

to be able to independently assess the orientation of actions. Furthermore, it is the aim of our educational work to show actualities of interpretative approaches, theories and concrete analyses of previous epochs. In weighing up the appropriateness and usefulness of these approaches for the present day, continuities and lines of development will be presented in order to question what is taken for granted today and to be able to make factors of their development understandable to the participants.

Low threshold

Access is to be granted as far as possible without conditions. However, the educational offers are neither superficial nor opportune. Only the everyday reference makes deeper, sustainable and comprehensive educational success possible. At the same time, there is a critical examination of the results of professionalisation, scientificisation, specialisation and institutionalisation of problems and approaches to solutions.

Activity orientation

Our educational offers concentrate on the transfer of knowledge with relevance for action. The target groups are to be enabled by our educational offers to develop and apply appropriate strategies, legitimation and forms of communication in the different situations of their everyday life that are relevant for them. Our educational offers are aimed at the development of technical, social and methodological skills.

Gender orientation

Gender orientation is central to the educational work of the educational institution. It is:

• Content of special educational offers
• Cross-sectional claim of all educational events of the educational institution and
• Guiding principles of internal work, communication and organisation.

In the training events, the addressees are sensitised to the various aspects of the gender approach, with the emphasis on promoting social competence by developing gender sensitivity. In the design of educational programmes, gender-oriented attention is accordingly paid to the contents, methods and didactics and perspectives in order to free oneself from androcentric imprints and to eliminate mechanisms of topic-irrelevant distinctions according to gender. Those involved in the educational institution do not use any forms of gender-specific division of labour. This can be seen, for example, in the two-gender implementation of educational events.

Methodical-didactical orientation of the educational institution

The educational institution uses reform pedagogical approaches in its educational work. Since classical educational work often only aims at educational processes on the cognitive level, it is mostly considered unsuitable for the field of political education. According to the educational understanding of SoBi., political education aims, among other things, at the levels of attitudes and values and has a pragmatic objective, according to which people should be enabled to act competently, responsibly and actively in their everyday lives in order to participate in the community. To this end, it is necessary to initiate educational processes on the affective and pragmatic level. This can be achieved through the diversity of methods used, whereby methods address, include and touch upon the attitudes and values of the addressees. Following reform pedagogical approaches, the focus in the design of educational situations is not on the general approach, but on the involvement of the participants. The educational situation is not structured hierarchically, but is shaped by the interaction and communication between educational providers and participants at the same level. Ideally, educational offers should be designed in such a way that power and power relations between providers and participants are replaced by cooperative processes based on free agreement, so that the distinction between teachers and learners becomes obsolete.