Protest against Jugendhaus-Aus

The youth center in Gilching will be closed at the end of September and integrated into the existing youth club. However, not everyone agrees with the municipal council's decision. Former visitors and employees are demanding more commitment to youth work.

Gilching - The debate was short, then the decision was made: The youth center on Weßlinger Strasse in Gilching will be closed (we reported). The SPD had applied to merge the youth club and youth center in the future. This decision caused astonishment among some of the long-established Gilching residents who used the facility in their youth and still feel connected to it today. One of them, Robert Born (42), wrote a long letter to the Starnberg Mercury. Signed by almost 30 people, most of them former officials and former youth center users. "That was a very quick action," explains Born, and is certain: "I'm sure many young people would have signed the letter too."

“The municipal council's duty to examine the proportionality of the funds it uses is undisputed,” writes Born. However, the municipal council did not deal with the question of alternatives to the situation, which it obviously perceived as unsatisfactory, "but instead deleted the location and thus the institution of the youth center that has existed for 27 years". The council did not formulate its requirements and expectations of a youth center. “You have to ask yourself: Why this rush and binary view of things?” There would have been leeway between closure and the status quo. The one-sidedness of the decision is remarkable and difficult to understand. That also applies to the speed with which this decision was taken. "Apparently it was undesirable to have a public discourse... This gives a taste of backroom politics. "

Born wonders whether the reason for the rededication was the pressure to make the area usable for other purposes. Born does not find the SPD survey in the “Project Future” necessarily representative in view of several thousand young people in Gilching. Apart from that, a centrally located, extensive offer for young people was also desired. “The current resolution offers nothing of the kind. The offer is getting smaller. "

For the Gilching youth it must seem strange if you are offered a shared room in the youth club for the specially dedicated house in exchange. “What is needed is open youth work that takes into account the entire heterogeneity of Gilching's youth,” says Born. In the so-called youth club, only a fraction of the youth could be offered space. In addition, the community continues to grow. “Wouldn't it have made sense here to even expand the offer of a youth center?” Born recalls the important role played by the youth center in pacifying Pollinger Strasse a few years ago. "It does not seem future-oriented to so willing to sacrifice the hard-won freedom of the youth in a growing community, just because one is currently not satisfied with the situation and obviously in need of land for municipal facilities." It is an obligation of politics to come up with an alternative to deal with just closed house. The need to give young people freedom "in which they can manage themselves within the framework of a pedagogical concept and learn and try out a lot in the process, is an important component in a modern communal overall concept for young people".

Born on behalf of all the signatories hopes that the local council will commission the administration to find a comparable location for a youth center. The criticized points could also be implemented and monitored there under the leadership of the new youth officer - “just as it could have been easily done at the current location”.