Initial Considerations:
Civic engagement has been for long a basic element in the development of societies, regardless of their organisational form and through all historical epochs. What is new, is that this engagement has moved into the focus of politics and research, not only in Germany, but also in other EU memberstates and worldwide.
Clash of civilisations and dialogue of cultures are both threat potential as well as an option for action in times of intensified migration and globalisation. Managing the dialogue is at the same time reducing the risk that the collision of different cultures and different values will grind open societies through the interplay of terror threat and surveillance state.
Governments and companies intensify worldwide communication, not only because they are convinced of its necessity, but because both have the tools for such a communication at hand:
governments sign agreements,
companies merge by using the legal forms available
The basic resource for stable development in peace, social security and ecologically sustainable ways of production and consumption, however, is the people’s awareness of the necessity of dialogue and cooperation in order to reach those goals for all.
Cooperation among people, however, is lacking adequate modes of intervening outside their local or regional environments. Transnational cooperation is largely underdeveloped in the world of NGOs or the Third Sector, of civil society organisations or the sector of social economy and public benefit. Even inside Europe cooperation beyond single, mostly EU financed projects is rarely to be found. Organisations working for child and youth care are working as little in cooperative structures with organisations abroad as it is the case with organisations working in health or environmental sectors. Particularly missing are concepts of institutional cooperation: joint ventures in social, cultural or environmental fields are rare or can’t be seen at all, institutional share holding with social enterprises is nearly unknown.
One of the reasons for this lack of cooperation and dialogue within the Third Sector is the lack of knowledge about the working conditions of the respective other. This relates not only to issues of respective concepts and backgrounds. It also relates to the respective mechanisms of financing, the available legal forms and fiscal frameworks.