The Arche Charity for Children and Adolescents: a New Building and Ten Years of Partnership with WACKER

A decade ago, the City of Munich initially provided the Ark with a construction container in the northern district of Moosach. This was just a temporary solution, but thanks to the dedication of the team at the Ark, it was still a happy place for children and adolescents. There the team at the Ark take care of the young people, provide a warm meal for lunch, help with homework and arrange leisure activities and school holiday programs. More containers were added in the course of the decade, before being removed in the spring of 2016. As the City of Munich was building them a new home on the same site, the Ark moved into neighboring city-owned premises temporarily.

For ten years, Wacker Chemie AG has been supporting The Ark’s work with an annual donation of €100,000 – currently the total stands at one million euros. In celebration of the long partnership, Larissa Rauter, the head of the Ark Munich, and Bernd Siggelkow, the Ark’'s founder, welcomed Christine Eibel from the city Youth Service, and Dr. Peter-Alexander Wacker, chairman of the Supervisory Board of Wacker Chemie AG. They unveiled a large painting project by the Ark’s children and visited the construction site of the charity’s new facility.

“The new building provides more than just more comfort and space than the container. It sends a strong signal that Munich is investing in order to combat child poverty,” stressed Dr. Peter-Alexander Wacker, referring to figures from the European statistical office, Eurostat: the number of impoverished children under 16 in Germany rose from 1.5 million in 2006 to 1.7 million in 2015. Bavaria is one of the richest federal states, and Munich is the 4th richest urban district in Germany. Yet despite this, a lot of children – even in this affluent city – are going without basic necessities. 21,000 children up to the age of 14 receive income support because their parents earn too little.

The commitment towards the academic success of the children at the Ark is bearing fruit: in 2011, four out of ten young people obtained a school-leaving certificate; in 2016, the figure rose to nine out of ten. Since 2012, 25 of Ark’s young people have successfully completed an apprenticeship; one of Ark’s protégés has even begun a degree in the meantime. “At WACKER we want to make a sustainable contribution through our commitments to society as well as through our business,”,explained Dr. Wacker. “That’s why we will continue to nurture and develop our ten-year-long partnership with the Ark.”