Laudatio by Mayor Dr. Wolfgang Schuster:

Where in the past cities were not considered to have an educational role, they have become venues for diverse educational projects and programmes.

As a consequence, a broader view of Education has emerged, which goes beyond the narrow formal education of knowledge and skills but includes the building up of an entire personality.

In this wider view, it is not important which competencies the municipality has in the area of Education. Hereby municipalities are key agents in bringing different actors together and encouraging and supporting collaboration between them.

Both winning projects - and yes, ladies and gentleman, we have two winners this evening - are based on an inclusive understanding of Education and a comprehensive, holistic approach to learning and children’s development.

In these projects, the child’s entire environment is included into the process of education, so as to enable the environment in which the child lives to support and promote the child.

Our first project aims at developing the personal and academic resources and strengths of the children in a socially disadvantaged neighbourhood, which is suffering the consequences of population decline and high unemployment.

It does this through the mandatory combination of school work and leisure time, the emphasis on physical exercise and the inclusion of children’s relatives into the programme’s activities. The programme has delivered tangible results in terms of lowered drop-out rates, children’s personal development and academic performance.

It is therefore with great pleasure that I ask all the representatives of the City of Cádiz to come on stage.

Laudatio by Wilfried Porth, Board of Directors, Daimler Group:

In the spirit of bringing together various actors for children’s promotion, both winning cities selected by the Jury for the European Award of Excellence “City for Children” honour their role of being networkers for and facilitators of children’s development.

Especially noteworthy is the inclusion of the family in their children’s Education in both winning projects. Where families are overburdened with their child-rearing responsibilities, they require systematic support which enables them to promote their children.

The aim of the second winning city is to establish a systematic support of all their city’s families and their children from birth.

The programme reaches almost 90% of families with new-borns directly after birth, ensures a smooth transition for children from day care to kindergarten and then primary schooling, up to the age of 14 years and includes the promotion of families with migrant backgrounds through specialised concepts.

For this, the city installed a “special needs language coordinator”, changed the structure of its administration to optimally combine the work between two formerly separate departments and effectively installed a dense network of cooperation between diverse partners.

May I therefore ask the City of Gelsenkirchen to the stage! Congratulations!

In the context of the Annual Conference of the European Network Cities for Children in Stuttgart, the cities of Gelsenkirchen and Cádiz were awarded the European Award of Excellence “City for Children”. This Award is presented for innovative projects in the field of child-friendliness. Topic of this year’s Award was “Informal Education” – the question was: “How can municipalities promote the education of the children and youth in their cities?”

“The prize-winning cities developed and realised innovative, exemplary projects. I am confident that this Award can deliver impulses for other European cities to become more child- and family-friendly” says Mayor Dr. Wolfgang Schuster. Also nominated for the shortlist were the cities of Porto, Cracow and Bucharest. The cities of Vienna, Offenbach, Zabrze and Namur were presented with Certificates of Special Recognition.

Over 40 cities from 18 European countries applied to this year’s Award. The Award presents successful, innovative and cost efficient child-friendly projects and recommends their approaches.

Dr. Ingrid Hamm, Executive Director of the Robert Bosch Stiftung: „The cities in the Cities for Children Network have realised their chance: Only a city that makes offers to the youngest of their societies and their families will be well prepared for the future. Child-friendliness then pays off for all generations“.

The European Network Cities and the City of Stuttgart initiated the European Award of Excellence „City for Children“ in 2008 in cooperation with the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe, the Council of European Municipalities and Regions, the Committee of the Regions and the Robert Bosch Stiftung to provide cities with an incentive to place the issue of child- and family-friendliness on the public agenda across Europe and to support the best-practice exchange among cities. European cities with over 100.000 inhabitants may apply.