TRAUN. Sevil Kus roams through Traun almost every day, knocks on doors, talks to people, helps where she can and mediates in conflict situations. Your five target areas are larger residential complexes in which thousands of people from different cultures live together. The fact that this works reasonably well is also due to her work and that of her colleague Alexander Koller, who are jointly responsible for the “Wohnen im Dialog” project of Volkshilfe OÖ in Traun.
“It’s about creating meeting places,” says Volker Atteneder, who heads the “Coexistence, Education and Work” department at Volkshilfe Oberösterreich. In larger blocks of flats, it has been shown that people do not talk to each other, and this creates a great deal of potential for conflict. “If you don’t know each other, the path to a dispute is much shorter,” says Atteneder. Such encounters arise primarily through joint activities such as settlement festivals, tenant meetings, cafés and many other event formats that have been developed over the years.
Normal neighborhood issues
It is also important that the residents identify with their living environment, pay attention to it and develop more understanding for one another. Basically, these settlements are also about normal neighborhood issues such as noise, garbage, shoes in the stairwell or parking spaces. However, these conflicts are often culturalized. “Then suddenly it’s no longer about the parking lot, but about the origin of the family,” says Kus. Volkshilfe makes no difference, sometimes its clients do. Although Kus, who was born in Turkey, rarely encounters any hostility, there are residents who would rather speak to her colleague Koller.
If someone moves in, Volkshilfe gets in touch within a short time and explains the house rules to the new residents in a way that they can understand. “Then we establish contact with residents who we already know so that the newcomers have a point of contact right away,” says Kus. This is followed by an invitation to the settlement festival, to the women’s café or to other activities.
Sometimes one project emerges from another. When some women complained at the “learning and laughing café” that they had never learned to ride a bike, the idea for the “city of learning to cycle” came up. Joint swimming courses are therefore also on the program. With the “foam waste separation”, the district waste association uses an empty garbage bag to show how to properly separate waste. And the “leisure bridge” brings clubs to the settlement so that migrants can also gain access. In Traun, for example, the American football team “Steelsharks” attended a party.
The contact point is also the office on Kirchenplatz, where Kus and Koller carried out 590 consultations last year. In the past, all migrants were simply sent to the integration offices, regardless of whether they had to deal with evictions, debts or other problems. The well-developed structure of counseling centers in the country has not felt responsible for a long time. “We tried to break that up,” says Atteneder.
This year the “Wohnen im Dialog” project is celebrating its 20th anniversary in Traun. Sevil Kus has been here for nine years. “I like the job because it’s versatile,” she says. The encounters and actions are a good balance to the conflict work. “If you can help families, then that motivates me,” says Kus.
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