The project KOMOBIL2035 is investigating how the accessibility of services for the general public in rural areas can be improved through voluntary work. Especially at the municipal level, voluntary work represents a field of broad and relatively untapped potential. For this purpose, a reliable knowledge base for the current state of voluntary work in rural areas until 2035 will be created by precisely ascertaining specific data on requirements, participants, motivations and obstacles. Building on this, transferable implementation strategies will be developed in close coordination with the municipal level and the participants represented there. These strategies will ultimately serve as the basis for concrete measures and the findings can be easily transferred to other areas of services for the general public. The overall aim of the research project is to investigate the potentials for action that municipalities and their administrations can take to ensure the functionality of services for the general public in the context of demographic processes and to test them in the real-life laboratory of Ostwürttemberg.

Within the project, nexus is responsible in particular for the qualitative accompanying research and the integration of key players through participatory processes. For example, qualitative interviews will be conducted in order to validate the findings of the quantitative data collection. At the same time, the proposals for future developments can be compared with the personal future expectations of committed individuals and other participants with regard to the development of voluntary work in the mobility sector. In addition, a scenario workshop will be conducted as a participatory workshop with external experts (from the fields of engagement, ageing and future studies) and the stakeholders of engagement-based services of general interest in the mobility sector. The workshop will serve to reflect upon the decisions in a forward-thinking manner and to orient their proposals towards the future.

Accompanying research in the implementation phase is intended to gather and process information that will allow the effectiveness of the concept and its implementation to be assessed and, if necessary, to make adjustments. Two focus groups will be carried out to obtain qualified feedback from various stakeholder groups. The quality of the concept and its implementation is to be determined discursively in a group discussion and possible suggestions for improvement will be developed.

Duration: 05/2017 – 02/2020
Client: Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF)
Team: Dr. Christine von Blanckenburg (project management), Franziska Detsch, Ansgar Düben, Marcus Neuhold
Project partners: Regionalverband Ostwürttemberg (project coordination), Gemeinde Rainau, Landkreis Ostalbkreis, Landkreis Heidenheim, Nahverkehrsgesellschaft Baden-Württemberg, pakora.net, Philipps-Universität Marburg