The winners of the 2006 "Bonner Chancen" (Bonn Opportunities) competition have been decided - the jury chose eleven development projects. "We're sprucing up our kindergartens" - that is the slogan of the second round of the development competition, "Bonner Chancen." This year the number of project proposals nearly doubled compared to last year, with around 100 entries from Bonn residents. Last week the jury of nine picked out eleven projects it deemed particularly worthy of support. Deutsche Telekom, T-Com and T-Mobile are supporting the competition with a sum of 100,000 euros.
"The high number of applications showed us that the development competition has inspired many creative ideas. The citizens of Bonn are very happy to accept help that allows them to help themselves," Ulrich Lissek, Senior Executive Vice President of Corporate Communications at Deutsche Telekom, said at today's presentation of the winners at the Group Headquarters in Friedrich-Ebert-Allee. "We would like to thank all the voluntary helpers who are going to realize the projects with us." Bonn's mayor, Peter Finger, added: "We are delighted about Deutsche Telekom's commitment and will support it in this competition in the future as well. The level of involvement demonstrates how important and successful citizens' initiatives are in our society," he explained.
The various different ideas for sprucing up the local kindergartens range from building greenhouses, senses trails, tree houses and rope bridges for outdoors to adventure areas and reading islands for indoors. All the projects were first checked and evaluated by experts from the Bonn Youth Welfare Office. The main areas under evaluation were the feasibility of the concepts, the support of voluntary helpers, integration of the children as well as the consideration of existing educational concepts. Following detailed examination, eleven projects were singled out as being particularly worthy of support:
1. Child day-care center, An der Rheindorfer Burg, Auerberg
2. Child day-care center, Siegburger Straße, Vilich
3. Child day-care center, Chemnitzer Weg, Tannenbusch
4. Krümelkiste child day-care center, Eduard-Otto-Straße, Kessenich
5. Huckepack e.V. child day-care center, Langenbachstraße, government quarters
6. Schatzinsel child day-care center, Kleinfeldstraße, Holzlar
7. Kindergarten Am Wolfsbach, Hoholz
8. Kleine Kaiser playgroup, Kaiserstraße, city center
9. Child day-care center, Waldenburger Ring, Tannenbusch
10. Metzental child day-care center, Talstraße, Muffendorf
11. Children's House Am Stadion, Beuel
Representatives of the cooperation partners, Carl Knauber Freizeitmärkte (Carl Knauber garden & outdoor centers) and Forster Garten- und Landschaftsbau (Forster garden and landscape centre) were also present for the announcement of the winners in the Group Headquarters alongside Deutsche Telekom and the mayor, Peter Finger. The jury of nine included Bonn's City Manager Arno Hübner, the Chairman of the Committee for Youth Affairs, Will Breuers, and Bettina Neusser-Eimermacher from the Bonn newspaper, the General-Anzeiger. The project sponsors then provided some background information on the projects and explained the ideas for the competition in more detail. Next the sponsors will coordinate their project plans with Deutsche Telekom, the City of Bonn and the cooperation partners. The refurbishment measures will start as early as May 2006.
Because of the high number of very convincing competition entries the jury decided to hand out ten special prizes in addition to the eleven main prizes: winners of these special prizes will each receive a voucher for more than 400 euros donated by the cooperation partner, Carl Knauber Freizeitmärkte. They can be redeemed on the big "special-offer-day" on May 9, 2006.
Deutsche Telekom has been inviting the city's residents to hand in their ideas for social or educational projects worthy of financial support for the competition every year since 2004. The theme of the 2004/2005 competition was playgrounds, and in 2007 the focus will be on Bonn's primary schools. The competition is part of the "Partner.Citizen.Neighbor" campaign, which brings together Deutsche Telekom's various commitments to the city and its citizens under one roof.
You can obtain more information on the competition on the Internet at