Outcomes
The first Stuttgart Market Place in 2007 was very successful and saw about 40 agreements between business and voluntary organisations. Two agreements were particularly striking – the cabinet maker Türenmann produced a cloakroom wardrobe for the premises of an association for the blind, while the members of the association for the blind gave a course for the trainees of the cabinet maker to show them how to appreciate how blind people manage to get their bearings and stay mobile - and also trained them in the use of specialised ICT. Another agreement between a Women’s Refuge and an oven maker resulted in the design and production of an imaginative and artistic collection box in the shape of an oven, which was so successful at attracting people to give donations that it is now being borrowed for use by many other charities.
At the second Stuttgart Market Place, out of the 80 agreements concluded in April 2010, 70 were already under way or completed by the end of the year. Almost all participating organisations indicated they were satisfied (or very satisfied) with the results of the event.
Here are some examples to give a taster of what the agreements are about:
- the Stuttgart Co-operative Bank (Stuttgarter Volksbank) pledged that all its trainees would engage for one week with the Römerschule, which is a public school in a disadvantaged neighbourhood in the city. The nine young trainees, who are about 16 years old, worked with school teachers in the classroom during the morning and led cultural and sports activities with the children (aged between 7-11 years) in the afternoon. Aurelia Schmiga, responsible for the trainee programme in the bank, thought that this gave them a quite different experience –and challenges - from sitting the whole day at a PC. As one of their coaches at the Bank people suggested:"These young people have really engaged and got lots of new contacts. They were fascinated by the great interest and open-mindedness of the childen".
- 16 immigrant women from a nonprofit 'House for Many Generations' in Stuttgart took part in basic PC training provided by a staff member of the consultancy KPMG. In return, the House of Generations offered KPMG use of their facilities, for example, for a company party.
