How to get involved as a parent?

There are a lot of myths surrounding the topic of these rare species called parents’ initiative. But hey, we’re here to explain it to you.

Basically, as a private parents’ initiative we the parents manage this school by ourselves. We get funds and subsidies from the city of Munich but the school and our association belong to us alone. We are a non-profit organization, or more correctly a registered association (eingetragener Verein), and our aim is not to make money but to manage and sustain My Kindergarten and to make it a worthwhile place to work and bring your kids to.

And that means? Well, it means that on the one hand all parents have a say about daily life at the school and help decide on important topics, but on the other hand they have an obligation to get involved and support the school through their work contribution. That means attending the regular parents’ meetings, doing their assigned tasks and helping out where needed. If no one participates or too few then this ship will go under. Sounds logical, right?

Of course, the board bears the greatest responsibility and does a lot to keep our parents’ initiative kindergarten running. But the board relies on the support of each and every family at the school. Families support the running of the place by performing their assigned tasks. This can be anything from gardening, to purchasing groceries or other items, washing the laundry, being the school handyperson and doing minor repairs and maintenance, or working on getting sponsorship. Every family is also asked to perform a duty week two to three times a year. This involves buying the groceries for the school for that particular week and doing a specific cleaning task in the school. But that’s no big deal. Honest. Read more about it in our rules of procedure.

You’re still with us? Perfect, that means you are interested. Good, that’s exactly the kind of people we need.

Oh, before we end this section, did we already mention how great it is to be part of this bigger My Kindergarten family? We have a lot of events and celebrations where the families are invited to participate and a lot of friendships between young and old have developed over time. So being part of our parents’ initiative is far from being just work. It’s fun too!