VIDEOS "VIENNA HEALTH AWARD 2019"

Dina Elmani-Zanka: We launched the "Merkima" project a few years ago because we realized it's important to talk to children about dementia, aging, and Alzheimer's. We spent a long time thinking about the title, how we could call it. And somehow I thought: Well, let's just use "Merkima," because I'll remember that too. During my master's thesis, I focused on Alzheimer's, and that's when I somehow realized that children and teenagers had been completely excluded. After that, I spoke to someone from Alzheimer Austria and asked how it really was in the discussion rounds with those affected and also with relatives of Alzheimer's patients. And we then discovered that children hardly have any contact with their grandparents, with their grandparents with Alzheimer's. And because I also come from design therapy, we worked with hand puppets to playfully bring this very difficult topic closer to the children. The initiative works in such a way that we have the opportunity to offer the workshops for free through donations. Interested educators then contact us. We schedule an appointment and then come directly to the class. What fascinated us a lot is that the children deal with this topic in a completely calm manner. They inherently have no inhibitions. That really comes more from the parents, who worry. For the children, they take it and also with a very relaxed manner and make the whole difficult topic very easy.

Fiona Rukschcio: We are a group of private individuals who call themselves "Breakfast in the Park," and since October 24, 2018, we go to Esterházypark in the sixth district every Wednesday, and prepare and bring healthy, good, and strengthening breakfast for homeless people. I live around the corner and I have two dogs. I thought my dog was better off than the people who have to live on the street, and I always felt embarrassed when I went there in the morning and saw them. What is important to us and what has also been very well received, is that we really offer healthy food, because somehow through stories and observations and so on, we realized that, for example, eggs or dishes with eggs are a rarity. Good milk, strong coffee, so not just coffee grounds, but really good, strong coffee, cocoa, tea, and all the vegetables and fruit. We also sometimes made mueslis, to take away in jam jars, warm porridge. So we also experimented ourselves and always actually offered something different, depending on what we received and repurposed and prepared. And I think that's also very important, because especially these people, who live under such harsh conditions, they need strengthening food. So that was also nice to see, or is nice to see, that people accept it and also like to eat and want it. So that this health aspect has really arrived.

Gudrun Lenk-Wane: The association is called "Deceleration and Orientation - Institute for Age Competencies" and was founded in 2005 by Hedwig Presch and Ingrid Liebe. The members are now 60 plus, who deal with questions about aging, and aging well. Both the association and I, we live in the 16th district, to the left and right of a park. We met, so to speak, in the park, because that is our immediate environment. One project takes place. And from that, ideas for the next one emerge. One project in the park was because there are so many plastic bottles lying around in the park. So we built a giant object from empty plastic bottles. As a continuation of that, there were the plastic bottles, but then the question was: Yes, but what's in the juices? What do people drink? What do they buy then? And then again, Ms. Presch had meanwhile become a member of a food cooperative, and there was a nutrition expert there, Agnes Pfeffer. Then we invited Agnes Pfeffer. What is a direct-pressed juice? What does nectar mean? What is 100% juice content? How much sugar? We met some women who live around the park there. We went together to Satzberg, picked Kriecherl there, so small Mirabelle plums, and then pressed the juice in the park with everyone.

Alexandra Münch-Beurle: The Office for Women's Health and Health Goals is responsible for the implementation of the Vienna Program for Women's Health and also for the coordination of the health goals process of the City of Vienna. We wanted to reach those people who are responsible for how working conditions in companies and organizations are designed. And also those people who go into companies and advise companies regarding work design. And there, the path of a curriculum as a multiplier approach seemed very suitable to us. The implementation of the project took place in cooperation with the Women's Health Center FEM Süd – Magistra Karin Korn, in particular, worked intensively on this – and the management consultant Magistra Birgit Pichler. Later, Dr. Irene Kloimüller, an expert in occupational health management, joined the project team. We were able to recruit three pilot companies who let us try out our curriculum. These were the Vienna Social Fund, the Workers' Samaritan Federation Vienna, and the Simacek Facility Management Group. One insight that quickly emerged for us was that women's empowerment in general in a company cannot be separated from women's health promotion in a company. That these topics are very closely intertwined. We are currently busy pouring all these experiences and expertise that we have gathered within the project into a handbook, to also make this content accessible to the public.

Gabriele Graumann:We have 30 locations in Vienna, 150 senior citizens' clubs. Taken together, we are as big as Eisenstadt. And what do we deal with? With self-determined living spaces for our residents and club visitors and self-determined and self-determined working environments for our employees. Our project is essentially "targeted talking" with the aim to empower people, to enable them, and of course, to raise awareness. Essentially, it's about employees from the Diversity and Health Management team – that's a separate department in our Kuratorium – have fanned out and conducted so-called "Ask and Go" rounds with the goal of addressing conflict situations, addressing them with the managers. For the employees, the goal was, the goal was to empower them and to say that those stress factors that arise from being treated badly, from being discriminated against, from not being able to express one's burdens, that the company actually provides a series of measures and is genuinely interested in our employees doing well. And then there was also a small focus group for the apprentices, to empower them, to strengthen them to say no, to strengthen them to say, "I don't want that, I can't do that, I don't accept that." We will definitely incorporate this method of low-threshold information and low-threshold engagement into our "normal operations."

Hilde Wolf: Our sponsoring association is called "Institute for Women's and Men's Health," and besides FEM Süd, there's also the Women's Health Center FEM and the Men's Health Center MEN. The "Durchblickerin" project emerged from a pilot project that also focused on health literacy. For this, it was important to have support from our cooperation partners. In this case, it was the Vienna Regional Health Insurance Fund, who agreed to continue this pilot project, which was originally funded by the Healthy Austria Fund, the Vienna Regional Health Insurance Fund, and Vienna Health Promotion. And the further development with "Durchblickerin" was, we originally had women as a target group – we now also include men. So women and men with and without a history of migration are the target group of the project. Also, members of the health and social professions. Because it's very important to us to not understand health literacy as a one-way street, but we know that we need to strengthen individual health literacy here. But we also need to familiarize doctors, nurses, and other psychosocial professional groups with the topic. The encouraging thing is that these courses are very, very well received by all target groups, that the cooperating institutions are also very convinced of the project and see its benefits, and actually the wish is that we can establish this offer as a regular and ongoing service.

Karin Kaiblinger: We specialize in advising catering facilities.

Rosemarie Zehetgruber: It turned out that a focus of our work became educational catering. Kindergartens, schools – and part of catering is also drinking. And that's how we came to water drinking. You know that about 40% of sugar consumption in children comes from beverages. And that's why we came up with the idea of simply drinking water in schools, in the pedagogical setting.

Karin Kaiblinger: At the beginning, there were also students who had never drunk water before, and we always hear from teachers: "I have individual children, or whose parents tell me, 'my child doesn't drink water.'" So they are just used to always drinking sugary drinks. But in a group, it's just much easier.

Rosemarie Zehetgruber: The project was funded by the Healthy Austria Fund, Vienna Health Promotion, Vienna Water is involved as a financier, and the Education Directorate supports it at all administrative levels. The school decides: we're becoming a water school. Parents are informed that they no longer need to send drinks from home. Students are equipped with a water bottle. Posters where you write down the drinking rituals for the class. There is a lot of support material for teachers, which is also very gladly accepted. A drinking culture will then be established at the school; water is simply drunk.

Karin Kaiblinger: The acceptance of the teachers was also particularly high. Probably also because it's hardly any effort.

Malika Guellil: The "Migrants for Health" project is a project of Volkshilfe Wien. It is funded by the Federal Ministry for Europe, Integration and Foreign Affairs and the Vienna Regional Health Insurance Fund. And why did we start this project? I always say poverty makes you sick. And people with a migration background are particularly affected by poverty and social disadvantage. In the project, we try to reach people who are difficult to reach through the Austrian health system, by offering specific, target group-oriented services. The health guides are the core of the project. These are volunteer women and men who themselves have a migration background. And these people are trained by us in the project in a course and receive basic information on health topics, which are particularly important in migrant communities. And then they go with this information into, among others, their communities and hold information events on health topics there. In the project year 2018, with our information events, we reached 1697 migrants, which of course represents a great success for us and also for our volunteers and health guides. So I always find it totally exciting to see how social conditions and health are connected. If I know what to say and how, how fast a doctor's procedure in Austria is, or if I simply have the orientation knowledge, that is actually an incredible health promotion.

Romeo Bissuti: The "Boys Live Diversity" project came about because MA 13 commissioned a study in 2016, in which they explored the youth in Vienna's youth centers, their attitudes, values, and similar things. And it showed that there were very, very many, especially male adolescents who had very derogatory attitudes, very homophobic attitudes, attitudes of a rigid masculinity. We were able to implement the project itself thanks to the financial support and funding from the Healthy Austria Fund, Vienna Health Promotion, and MA 13. We would like to express our sincere thanks to the funders. We visited 30 youth centers here and implemented workshops with these youth centers. We developed these workshops together with the youth facilities and the boys themselves. The team that was with us in the facilities of open youth work is not only multi-professional, but also brings different personal backgrounds and many different languages. For the boys, it was often surprising to see that they got to meet a doctor who was at the youth center. He was just there to talk. And perhaps not only in German, but also in Turkish. Or to meet a psychotherapist who also speaks Dari-Farsi or Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian. But also regarding derogatory attitudes, that they had adult men who they could connect with their community and where they saw that they represent modern masculinity images, equality-oriented masculinity images. They still stand up for that and are still understanding.

Ilse Gstöttenbauer: The association Login is a professional, non-profit organization for health promotion and social integration, and we primarily target marginalized groups of people. The project was initiated in 2015. That was the year of the large refugee movement. As an association for integration and health promotion, we understood it as a mandate to offer services here for refugees. It was, so to speak, a dictate of the hour, that we also get involved here and offer activities for the people who are new to Austria, to Vienna. Through sporting activities, we thought, easy access is possible. And the entry is simple and it is an attractive offer, facilitating, so to speak, contact between different target groups. It was very important from the beginning that we don't just do a pure refugee project, but that it's about mixing. That it can have an integrative effect. The groups were mainly volleyball groups for men, women, mixed teams, football groups. The "social part" was also always important, that's what we called it, afterwards or before. There was time to sit together, to chat, to get to know each other, to drink coffee, to cook Afghan or Syrian or Arabic food, to get to know other things as well. Diversity is enriching and also something completely normal in a big city. And that is also an important insight that I believe we were able to pass on and convey in the project.