Model project “ehrenamtinteraktiv”: Digitised networking of various actors of civic engagement

As a "Digital Model Region”, the City of Aachen is taking on a pioneering role in the digitisation and promotion of civic engagement: within the framework of the project “ehrenamtinteraktiv”, an interactive platform is to be created that brings together offers and demands for voluntary work in a transparent, flexible and user-friendly manner. In its role as a promoter of the cooperation between science and civil society the RRI Hub is in exchange with the project management of the City of Aachen.

Launched in March 2020, the project ehrenamtinteraktiv aims to promote networking among a wide range of actors to strengthen civic engagement. For this purpose, an interactive online platform is to be created on which citizens, associations, companies and educational institutions can easily submit requests or offers for voluntary work. The project is funded by the State of NRW within the framework of the programme “Digital Model Regions in NRW”. During a visit to the Office for Voluntary and Civic Engagement of the City of Aachen on July 7th, the State Secretary for Sports and Voluntary Engagement of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, Andrea Milz, expressed her enthusiasm for ehrenamtinteraktiv according to a press release of the City of Aachen: “In Aachen, people are thinking about how it could be one day in the whole of NRW”.

The platform is also intended to address actors in science, e.g. educational institutions and research facilities. In thix context, Julia Berg and Joscha Wirtz, project coordinators of the Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) Hubs at RWTH Aachen University, have been in contact with ehrenamtinteraktiv since the conception of the proposal. The RRI Hub promotes, among other things, the intensive cooperation between science and society and welcomes the networking of civic engagement with science within the framework of a platform such as ehrenamtaktiv.