Vhs Eching got through the corona pandemic well - financially too.
That became clear at the annual general meeting.
There were no surprises in the new elections either.
Eching
- continuity and the will to continue a trusting cooperation characterized the most important item on the agenda at the annual general meeting of the Eching Adult Education Center: the new elections.
The four-person executive board stood for re-election and was rewarded with a unanimous vote of confidence: 1.
Chairman and Mayor Sebastian Thaler, Deputy Sybille Schmidtchen, Treasurer Nicole Wolz and Secretary Andreas Lederer in office.
They are supported by the six assessors Gisela Duong, Daniela Pflügler, Claudia Stang, Ulrike Wilms, Heinz Müller-Saala and Arndt Palitzsch.
Doris Fähr: "An eventful year with few courses"
“A lot has happened - and a lot has not happened.” With this seemingly contradicting résumé, Eching's Vhs managing director Doris Fähr summarized her annual report, which was shaped by the pandemic, for an “eventful year with few courses”.
Despite all the frustration with failures, financial collapse and decline in the number of participants, the Vhs management and the association's board were convinced: “We made the best of it.” We were even able to win four new members.
By the way: Everything from the region is now also available in our regular Freising newsletter.
A great success - despite Corona - is undoubtedly the recent certification of the municipality of Eching as a Fairtrade Town, in which the Vhs played a major role as a co-initiator and supporter of the steering group.
From now on, so emphasized Fähr, from March 13, 2020, one had to enter "new territory" - the four-person team as well as the lecturers and also the participants.
For the first time, a series of courses first had to be canceled, then processed individually and the fees paid out proportionally or fees remitted.
Good news: a number of participants donated the full course fee despite the cancellation - a total of around 2500 euros.
“Vhs Eching goes digital” is becoming more and more professional
With the increasingly professional online strategy "Vhs Eching goes digital" from May 2020, flanked by numerous further training courses on the one hand and an accompanying outdoor strategy from June, especially in the health sector, on the other hand, you have "a lot of momentum" and a large portion of " Curiosity ”faced the changed framework conditions. Conceptually, from autumn 2020, there was a lot of "multi-track" driving and a new, variable format that also included hybrid courses. In order to coordinate corona-compliant room sizes and the number of participants, Fähr vividly describes how each individual seminar room had to be laboriously measured with a folding rule.
Thanks to an existing buffer, i.e. reserves, Vhs Eching did not have to be in the red in the 2020 corona year - and its existence is not threatened.
But statistical comparative figures show clear drops (partly cushioned by state and federal funding programs).
The number of participants has decreased from 5038 (2019) to 3009 (2020), while the number of double lessons has been almost halved from 2622 to 1329.
Nevertheless, due to the “social compatibility”, the company decided not to compensate for the reduced number of participants in small courses by increasing the fees.
The greatest possible flexibility remains the be-all and end-all
At the beginning of 2021, an extensive free trial offer with over 30 courses in the health sector was put together and intensively advertised, and a “summer special” was subsequently launched in addition to the series. In autumn 2021, when the 3G rule has to be implemented for participants and course instructors, the alpha and omega still means the greatest possible flexibility - and a short-term changeover, if necessary, from A (presence) to O (online).
Currently, the situation is still "not inspiring", Fähr described the status quo, which is characterized by great uncertainty as to how the pandemic will develop and by a certain "general lethargy" among the participants - an observation that is shared by other adult education centers .
The managing director is aware that it will "require significant efforts to achieve a level that is nearly as high as it was before the pre-Corona times."
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