Germany

The team at Aspen Bad Oldesloe selected three beneficiaries to support through their 2013 Mandela Day activities. These include St. Joseph’s Children’s Home, Luftballon Kindergarten and Haus am Königteich Retirement Home.

Aspen Bad Oldesloe’s employees participated in a range of activities in accordance with these beneficiaries’ needs. The surrounding of a sport yard at the St. Joseph’s Children’s Home was painted and a second Aspen Team accompanied 15 children living at the Children’s Home on a summer vacation day trip to visit the famous Hamburg Zoo Hagenbeck. The elderly residents at the Haus am Königteich, were taken on a wheelchair-bound sightseeing tour of Bad Oldesloe and enjoyed a stop at an ice-cream bar after they were taken on a visual tour through the Aspen Bad Oldesloe manufacturing facility via a short video clip in the morning.

At the Luftballon Kindergarden Aspen employees enhanced the garden, mowed the lawn and cut the hedges to enhance the visual appeal of the facility for the children.

The St. Joseph’s Children’s home (founded 111 years ago) presently accommodates 133 boys and girls from birth to the age of 18. One of them is disabled. All the children have parents, but they are unable to live at home for various reasons, mostly due to social problems.

The Luftballon Kindergarten facility provides children with an environment in which they have early access to music instruments,are able to develop by listening to music (in co-operation with the Bad Oldesloe music school) and undergo psychomotoric courses. The Kindergarten seeks to support and create a fun, motivating and challenging environment for the 45 children, who are no older than 6 years. In fact, 15 of them are aged 1-3 years. This is a great help to their families as there is a shortage of centres in Germany that offer facilities such as these for very young children. The 5-6 year old children particularly enjoy the scientific experiments of which the lab equipment was sponsored by Aspen last year. The Luftballon is an Integration Kindergarten and also accommodates three physical disabled children.

Haus am Königteich caters for 97 elderly residents. Certain pensioners have limited mobility and reside at the home as they either have no family or their families are not able to care for them during the day. These residents also have limited access to shopping and social engagements – other than the activities provided at the home, so any outdoor excursion is a wonderful treat for them.