Public Vitality: New Alliances for Lasting Local Impact
Public Vitality: New Alliances for Lasting Local Impact
An invitation to a conversation on resilient local infrastructure over coffee and croissant 🥐☕️
In January, parts of south-west Berlin were without power for more than four days. Within hours, people across neighbourhoods and communities came together to organise support. But when the lights came back on, important questions remained: How do we sustain this momentum, who can support these initiatives, and how can we turn a one-time response into lasting local infrastructure?
The phenomena is quite common: A courtyard garden sparks a lot of interest in the neighbourhood. Forty volunteers get involved, however there are two exhausted organisers. A street starts looking after its older neighbours during a heatwave, but after the emergence of the crisis, support slowly fades. Getting people involved can be the easy part. The real challenge is often maintaining this involvement when the initial founders step back and building lasting structures becomes essential.
Public Vitality is about what keeps a place alive between crises, and we want to raise the question of who sustains it. Non-profits and local initiatives are often great at getting things off the ground and responding to emergencies, while foundations can fund activities but often only for a limited time. Businesses have people and spaces, but often don’t know how to get involved locally. Public administration can provide structures and continuity but needs time to make things happen.
We want to explore what each of our sectors can contribute to building resilient local infrastructure together.
Three questions to start with:
Ownership: Who takes responsibility for a project once the need for a more structured approach arises?
Conditions for saying yes: What would each stakeholder need to commit to a project, whether that is a budget, a mandate, a space or a dedicated counterpart?
Contribution: What can businesses offer beyond financial support, and what would encourage them stay involved for years rather than just one campaign?
Who is joining?
We will be around 20 people from public administration, business, foundations and neighbourhood initiatives.
Who are we?
Public Vitality Camp is a shared learning space for people already working on societal, institutional, technological and ecological challenges. This September, we hosted more than 15 sessions with over 200 participants at Teufelsberg and medulla, advancing these topics through collective practice. This breakfast continues that work in a smaller, more focused setting.
Vostel.de is a Berlin-based social enterprise helping everyone shape a just, sustainable world. Since 2015, it has been connecting volunteers, non-profit organisations and committed companies through its platform and consulting.
📍Hosted at Medulla
Situated on the Kreuzberg/Mitte border, Medulla is a physical space for turning shared urgency into collective resilience by building new collaborations and infrastructures of prosperity. It brings together organisations, practitioners, and communities working across different fields to respond to the technical, ecological, economic, and cultural crises shaping our shared future.
We look forward to a candid, constructive morning together!
Snacks will be generously provided by the Vostel. Please note that there will be pictures taken at the event. If you would prefer not to appear in any photos shared publicly, please let the team know before the event starts.