District and City of Lichtenfels launch survey among young people
The pandemic has changed everything - especially the everyday life of children and young people. Meetings with friends, leisure activities and even school are only possible - if at all - under special conditions. This puts an increasing strain on many adolescents. The district and the city of Lichtenfels take the concerns of adolescents seriously - and have jointly launched a pilot project and invited over 200 adolescents to take part in an online survey.
The aim is to identify the problems and challenges that the pandemic poses for them - and to address them in the future through targeted measures. More than 60 young people have already taken part in the survey. It turned out that a large number of them particularly miss recreational opportunities, events and celebrations and social contacts. "Many people lack these things in view of the current situation. For adolescents, however, it is social contacts and personal exchange that are important for their personal development," says Matthias Schäfer, head of the district's sports and youth work department. The situation cannot be changed at the moment, but together we want to see how we can make it more bearable for the adolescents.
"We see this as our responsibility," says District Administrator Dr Reinhard Kubat. "We don't want the children and young people, for whom this situation is very stressful anyway, to fall by the wayside - and would therefore like to respond to the concrete concerns and wishes, as far as it is somehow possible for us." For this, it is important to make the adolescents' voices heard.
"We would therefore like to encourage all young people from Lichtenfels who were contacted by letter to take part in the survey. For the time being, we have sent this specifically to age groups who are in complete distance learning," adds Lichtenfels Mayor Henning Scheele, who together with Yvonne Pixa from the school social work department and Claudia Vach from the Evangelical Youth Lichtenfels-Eisenberg gave the impetus for the project - and also got the Waldeck-Frankenberg district on board. "At some point, the situation will hopefully relax again, rules will be relaxed and more will be possible again. Then we want to be prepared and offer the adolescents as much as possible of what they are missing at the moment - even if under Corona conditions," the city hall boss continues. However, the offers should then be aimed at all age groups, not just the participants in the survey.
An online survey initiated by the district is currently running. The young people can give feedback digitally and anonymously. This feedback will then be evaluated - and concrete measures for action will be derived from it. The district also invites all other towns and municipalities in Waldeck-Frankenberg to participate in the project - in order to extend the survey to all adolescents in Waldeck-Frankenberg if possible. For more information, please contact the district's sports and youth work department at 05631 - 954 495 or send an e-mail to matthias.schaefer@lkwafkb.de.