By implementing the project, we wanted to contribute to the establishment and sustainability of “public living rooms”, as local self managed spaces, where community building, empowerment and informal learning takes place. We had three main overall objectives. We wanted to ..: A) .. make knowledge on the functioning of public living rooms accessible B) .. improve the quality of adult education in public living rooms C) .. assure continuity in the organizational process of public living rooms
We applied for this project as a follow up of the "Support the Supporters" action that the German and Slovak partners started in march 2022 as a response to the war. The Slovak mother centers were doing the best they could to provide support to the refugees from Ukraine, many of whom were mothers of young children. The “public living rooms”, or self help community centers in which the refugees landed, were providing direct, practical and personal support. It was exactly what the people fleeing the war needed. They found a ‘home away from home’ and would like to take the concept back, once they returned. The needs that were formulated to follow up on the crisis response, were many: “How to pass on knowledge about the public living room to the Ukrainian Mothers” for example. But also, “how to consolidate the practical knowledge of the self help parent groups” and “how to reflect on the process taking place in the public living room” . We applied in short, in order to deepen our understanding of the underlying concepts of the public living room, to be able to discuss that and pass it on.