Das Mönchengladbacher Erzählcafé e.V.

About us

The Mönchengladbach Conversation Café is a non-profit association that is assigned to the field of intergenerational educational and cultural work. The registered association (file number 18 VR 1988, district court Mönchengladbach) has existed since 1997.
Active members include young and old volunteers. The aim is to promote, support and initiate cultural education work with and for older people in Mönchengladbach. The forum is the conversation café. The events, which are currently organized once a month, usually take place in social facilities.
The events of the conversation café create cultural meeting places, open the old people's homes to the interested public and offer exchanges and encounters with the residents. The focus is on the intergenerational exchange, the integration of knowledge from experience, of competencies, skills and abilities.
Conversation Cafés are shaped by three essential elements: conversation, informal education and conviviality. In addition to an appealing atmosphere (music, coffee, pastries, interior design) as a framework, topics from different cultural areas are taken up.
The topics are prepared free of charge by storytellers / initiators and presented in the conversation café. Moderation takes place, which promotes opportunities for discussion between storytellers and visitors. The planning, organization and implementation of the storytelling cafés is carried out by the active volunteers of the association.

Other areas of responsibility of the conversation café
• Advice, support and accompaniment for institutions, volunteers and other inquirers with regard to the conceptual orientation of cultural events in the field of work with the elderly
• Bundling of competencies within the framework of a culture exchange, evaluation, documentation, creation of transparency
• Creation of practical opportunities for volunteers and various professional groups (social workers / social pedagogues / cultural educators)
• Cooperation, networking with volunteer centres, schools, centres for the elderly, institutions working with the elderly
• Training of volunteers
The implementation of these tasks is substantiated, among other things, in the cooperation with the competence centre "Resource-oriented Aging Research (REAL)" at the Niederrhein University of Applied Sciences. Through this cooperation, the work of the Mönchengladbach narrative café finds its way into research and teaching at the university, especially in the social work department, and on the other hand, the work of the university has an impact on the practical application of ideas and findings in the conversation café.

Future Plans
• Creation and expansion of these websites with connection to a data pool for interested parties and multipliers
• Inventory of all storytelling cafés and storytelling café models for NRW and establishment of a "round table storytelling cafés in NRW"
• Organization of training events
• This promotes the exchange of experiences and mutual support

Sigrid Verleysdonk-Simons is the chairwoman of the Mönchengladbach Conversation Café.

For other net participants we can offer an expert guidance through trained staff, give an expert opinion, procure expert information and establish new contacts in the field of our work.