Hello everyone,
today I would like to apply once more to be Local Lead for the district of Offenbach.
I have held this role for roughly 18 months now, and looking back on that time, quite a lot has actually happened. The biggest shared project was without doubt the local election. We prepared, discussed and organised a great deal, ran a campaign, and in the end we won seats.
That was an important moment for me. Above all because it showed that together we can genuinely achieve something.
And that is exactly what I would like to build on in the next term.
I am a computer scientist and have really always been interested in politics. These days I even get to take on political responsibility myself as a volunteer city councillor in Rodgau. That gives me another perspective on how much local politics can move in very concrete terms, and at the same time on how important it is to bring people along and to explain what you are actually doing and why.
Because I believe that this is precisely one of our next tasks at Volt.
We have good ideas. We have clear values. By now we have people holding local mandates who translate those values into concrete political work.
But we also have to talk about it.
If we do good work and nobody hears about it, that only helps us build Volt to a limited degree. We need to show more clearly what we do, what we stand for, and also what sets us apart from other parties.
This is not about simply producing more press releases or more social media posts. It is about developing a recognisable profile.
When someone in the district of Offenbach thinks of Volt, they should have an idea of what we stand for.
For a united Europe. For an open and diverse society. For a politics that looks for solutions instead of merely managing problems. For sustainability and intergenerational fairness. And for the willingness to try new approaches.
European, pragmatic and progressive: to me those are not just three terms from our programme. I think they describe rather well how we ought to do politics.
European also means something very practical to me, for example: we do not have to solve every problem afresh in every town. We can look at what works in other towns, other regions or other European countries, and consider what of that we can use here.
Pragmatic means to me that in the end what matters is not who a good idea comes from, but whether it works.
And progressive means that we are ready to change things and do not cling to something just because we have always done it that way.
That is what I would like to carry outward more strongly in the district of Offenbach.
A second important point for me is recruiting members.
If we want to grow as a party, we need more people who join in with us. And I believe we can still get better at that.
We need to be more visible and to approach people actively. At the same time, people who come to us need to be able to find a place with us fairly quickly.
Not everyone wants to become a Local Lead or take on a mandate. And not everyone has several hours every week for party work.
One person might want to help at an information stand. Another is interested in a particular political topic. Someone else is good at organising, writing, designing, or simply feels like joining in now and then.
I want us to stay open to exactly that.
That new members do not first have to figure out how everything works before they can get involved, but that we welcome them, get into conversation with each other and ask: What would you like to do? What can you contribute? And where can we support you?
For that we naturally also need sensible structures.
We have changed over the past months, and our mandates have changed our work as well. Today we take on responsibility in different places than we did 18 months ago. That is why we also need to develop our structures further.
For me this is above all about reliability. Who does what? Where do you find information? How do we make decisions? How do we make sure that knowledge does not sit with just two or three people?
And also: How do we distribute work so that it is not always the same people doing everything?
That is probably the computer scientist in me too. I like structures that work.
But at the same time I also know from the past 18 months that party work cannot be planned like a technical project. We work with people, we do it on a voluntary basis, and sometimes things turn out differently from how we imagined them beforehand.
That is part of it too.
For me, being Local Lead therefore also does not mean doing everything myself or having to have the right answer to everything.
I see the task more as bringing things together.
Connecting people with one another, passing on information, getting projects started and making sure that an idea eventually turns into something concrete.
And sometimes it simply means being there when someone wants to do something and needs support.
In the next term I would also like to connect our local political work more closely together.
We now have mandates. That gives us a completely different opportunity than we had 18 months ago.
We are gathering experience in the municipalities. We table motions, hold conversations, and see which ideas work and where we run into limits.
We should share this knowledge with each other more.
And we should carry it outward.
Because I believe that people do not get to know a party mainly through a hundred-page programme. They get to know it through people and through concrete topics.
When we achieve something somewhere, we should talk about it.
When we make a good proposal, we should explain why.
And when something does not work, we may say that openly too.
For me, political communication does not have to be perfect. It has to be credible.
That is exactly where I see a great opportunity for the time ahead.
The local election has given us a foundation. Now we should make something of it.
Win more members. Involve existing members more strongly. Develop our structures further. Connect our local political work with each other and, above all, make more visible what Volt stands for in the district of Offenbach.
I would like to keep helping with that.
Over the past 18 months I have learned a fair amount, including about what works well and what we can do differently or better.
And I still feel like taking on this task.
Not because I believe I can or should do everything myself. Quite the opposite. I want us to find more people who take on responsibility and bring in their own ideas.
Because if I take one thing away from the past term, it is exactly this:
Together we can achieve quite a lot.
The local election showed that.
Now it is about building on it and also showing others what we can achieve together.
For that I would like to work and shape things with you for another term as Local Lead.
I would be glad of your trust.
Thank you all.