Diversity matters – and ORMS knows this

Diversity matters – and ORMS knows this

I said it before and I will continue to stress this topic: The world may not become smaller, but because our mobility has been improving so much in the last 100 years, our communities are becoming increasingly multi-cultural and multi-ethnical. There are residents from more than 60 different nations and backgrounds living in Bradley County and across the Southeast of Tennessee today.

Unlike in the past, when the USA were generally considered a “melting pot of cultures”, today’s world features a multitude of social groups who sometimes live and work next to each other – or in the best-case scenario – with each other.
That’s why I prefer the metaphor of a mosaic over the melting pot. All of us are parts of something bigger. Therefore it is necessary to understand where our neighbors come from and how their views on life may differ from our own. Understanding somebody else’s perspective not only makes us good neighbors – it broadens our horizon and it should helps us realize that not everything we think of as being “right” and “true” is right and true in a universal sense.

One of the organizations that embrace cultural, ethnical and national diversity in our community is ORMS – Ocoee Region Multicultural Services with its Cleveland Mosaic Center. I am proud to be a member of the ORMS board and our achievements in the past calendar year. We have big plans for the future and we are confident that our coming projects will benefit the entire community of the Ocoee region.

Currently ORMS is in the process of adjusting its leadership. While our two main officials – Cleveland Mayor Tom Rowland as Co-Chairman and Lee University VP Gary Ray as Board President – will remain unchanged, the board has decided to appoint a number of additional leaders to assist in growing the organization. Come fall we should have a leadership in place that will reflect the multi-cultural character of our region and that will put our projects and plans into action.

Here is what the Cleveland Daily Banner had to say about this:

Multicultural agency seeks nominees

The nominating committee for the 2010 Ocoee Regional Multicultural Services is looking for people interested in serving on the organizations governing board.
Cleveland Mayor Tom Rowland, said, he envisioned an organization aimed at helping legal immigrants assimilate into city life and benefit from educational and business opportunities available in the city and Bradley County.
“This would be a good opportunity for someone new to our city to become involved,” he said. “Who has better knowledge of how to help others fit in than someone who has gone through it themselves.”
ORMS President Gary Ray said it is important for leaders to step forward who can help continue building on the success of a slate of summer activities such as the crash course in German, the summer cultural camp for youth hosted by the Museum Center at Five Points and the German Way seminar aimed at identifying the differences and common characteristics shared by people in both countries.
“When WACKER and Volkswagen people move into this area and hit the education system they will find what they are looking for and that was followed up by Cleveland State Community College hosting an interpreters training session because interpreters are becoming more and more requested,” Ray said.
The organization strives to meet the needs of legal immigrants in three areas. The first is to help people assimilate on the individual and family level; secondly, to take advantage of educational opportunities by providing English language courses and cultural sensitivity training — anything that will help people become more aware of the value of diversity.
“Even if they are just taking a trip overseas and they want to learn conversational Spanish in a way that’s not offensive,” Ray said. “A new area is emerging in business development where we provide cultural services to businesses and organizations to help foster international business development.”
Hispanic and Russian cultures represent the largest groups among the 62 foreign nations in Cleveland.
“Our mission is to support legal immigrants to help them assimilate and become productive and recognize those who are contributing by spotlighting them as role models,” he said.
It is those role models Ray is asking to serve or if someone may nominate another person. Either way, nominees will be contact to see if they are willing to serve.
“In our Sept. 29 meeting, we will vote on those that are willing to serve,” Ray said.
For more information, please contact nominating committee members Brenda Sheehy by e-mail at bjsheehy@tsbdc.org; Michelle Davis, mdavis@southernheritagebank.com; or Eloise Waters, Eloise.waters@state.tn.us

What a TV police drama can teach you about Germany

What a 40-year-old TV police drama show can teach you about Germany

Today I came across a great article in the New York Times which tries to explain the ongoing popularity of the German crime TV show Tatort.
Well oserved.  Find the original text here.

German Viewers Love Their Detectives

BERLIN — When “Law & Order” kicks off its new season next month, it will tie “Gunsmoke,” at 20 years, as America’s longest-running prime-time drama. Here in Germany, where a police procedural called “Tatort” has been around nearly four decades, 20 years can seem as ephemeral as a high school romance.

“Tatort” is a little akin to what Johnny Carson’s “Tonight Show” was in America. It’s one of those modest pop-culture symbols and long-standing common experiences that can be hard for outsiders to translate but that speak to, and of, a nation. First broadcast in 1970, before video games or food processors and when Germany seemed permanently split in two, the show adopted the age-old formula of a pair of detectives solving a murder to devise a distinctly German version of the crime drama.

Relatively speaking, violent crime isn’t common here. The killing of four people by a gunman who went on a rampage near Düsseldorf last week was all the more shocking for being exceptional. With a population of 82 million, Germany had 864 homicides in 2007; there were around 20 times as many in the United States, where the population is not quite four times as big.

Maybe that’s a reason “Tatort” (it translates as “Crime Scene”) plays down graphic violence in favor of character development and crime solving.

It was a smash from the start. At one time three-quarters of German television viewers tuned in. Now, when cable channels atomize viewers, more than seven million people still make a ritual of turning off their phones and getting together on Sundays at 8:15 p.m. for an hour and a half to catch the show at home or in bars, some of which, “Tatort” hangouts, receive advance DVDs so fans can pause the action before the killer is unveiled and collectively try to guess who did it.

And by now the opening credits (a pair of eyes caught in crosshairs), which haven’t changed since the first broadcast, are embedded in the German psyche the way Bart Simpson skateboarding through Springfield or the Bunkers croaking “Those Were the Days” at the upright are embedded in American minds. As a measure of “Tatort’s” familiarity, as well as of a certain political desperation, this spring the German Left Party even put up a former “Tatort” actor, Peter Sodann, as its candidate for president. (He finished third.)

Part of the show’s success has derived from an endearing verité. Crimes happen in distinctly German locales like the little city garden plots called schrebergarten, where nature-loving Germans grow their own tomatoes and show off their odd taste for plastic gnomes. The “Tatort” detectives in Cologne invariably stop at their favorite büdchen, the little beer and bratwurst stands typical of the Rhineland. Even the show’s gloomy lighting seems to stir in some Germans a homey familiarity.

There are 15 versions of “Tatort” produced by the various regional divisions of ARD, the German public broadcasting system. So this means there’s a Leipzig “Tatort,” a Frankfurt “Tatort,” a Bremen “Tatort,” a Kiel “Tatort,” a Stuttgart “Tatort” and even a Vienna one, made by Austrian television, all of which take turns sharing the Sunday time slot with “Polizeiruf 110,” the former East German knockoff of the show, still producing new episodes occasionally.

Consider the show a kind of microcosm of the German Federal Republic. Its producers proudly tout it that way. Each “Tatort” makes something of its regional roots, with actors speaking in local accents, solving crimes based on local imbroglios; and Germans talk about their favorite “Tatort” roughly the way they do about their local soccer teams. The “Tatort” from Münster plays for laughs. In Konstanz, a green swath of the country, the “Tatort” detectives often crack environmental cases. Hamburg stars a hunky, James Bond-like Turkish detective who works alone; Hanover, a beautiful, clever female detective, also a loner.

You could say it’s “CSI,” regionally speaking, but it’s too German to be confused with that American franchise, meaning not slick, far less bloody and with an eye toward spicy headlines. Not long ago a “Tatort” about incest in a community of Kurdish and Turkish Alevi provoked tens of thousands of protesters to take to the streets in Cologne and Hamburg; the producers responded by agreeing not to show that episode in repeats.

“We air some 30 new episodes a year, and so there are inevitably protests from time to time,” said Rosemarie Wintgen, with a shrug. She’s the producer of “Tatort” in Berlin, which contributes two episodes a year, at a cost of $1.4 million to $2.8 million each, an extravagant amount for German television.

The Berlin version stars Boris Aljinovic and Dominic Raacke, playing detectives Felix Stark and Till Ritter. Stark is a single father, Ritter a womanizer, a lone cowboy. They’re cool but high-strung Berlin types, and the crimes they solve in this multiracial seat of the German government often take off from local cases of political corruption or violence against immigrants. The last show partly entailed a company selling tainted meat, inspired by a scandal a couple of years ago involving döner kabobs.

Today’s “Tatort” detectives, like Stark and Ritter, follow in the footsteps of Horst Schimanski, played, starting in the early ’80s, by Götz George as a foul-mouthed working-class stiff who both mesmerized and polarized the country. Conservative Germans complained that he shamed the image of the police. Younger Germans saw in him something else. Ms. Wintgen, the producer, described Schimanski as a role model for postwar German men.

“He was a strong character, active, not apologetic or careful,” she said. “He was not how German men acted but how, in secret, they wanted to think of themselves.”

When presented with that thought during a break in filming a new episode here recently, Mr. Aljinovic and Mr. Raacke pondered and then somewhat reservedly agreed. “That was a while ago,” Mr. Raacke said, perhaps feeling a little competitive with a predecessor whom even now no one here seems to have forgotten. Over the course of more than 700 episodes “Tatort” has featured 70 detectives. There are common threads: They’re never Sherlock Holmes. They’re almost invariably glum, gloomy characters, mired in bad relationships or alone — in the end, ordinary people, which is how a country, democratic to a fault, tends to like its stars. In that respect too “Tatort” is notably German.

Or as Ms. Wintgen put it: “Its detectives stand for the dreams of the people. The plain-looking guy or the middle-aged blonde who in the end solves all of life’s problems and finds the murderer.

“That’s our kind of hero.”

Local promoters should establish a relationship with VW

Why Chattanooga area music and  event promoters should establish good relationships with Volkswagen

I like it when old and new come together. In this case I am referring to my old professional life as a business analyst and writer in the music industry and my new life as intercultural consultant.
Chattanooga’s biggest corporate investor, Volkswagen, has always had a strong connection to the music industry in Germany. For instance, VW’s Sound Foundation has been helping up-and-coming artists with tour support for years, the car maker also sponsors several music events and supports newcomers. Today the company announced it will act as the main sponsor for the Echo Klassik Award, Germany’s version of a Grammy for classical music.

Why would the Southeast care, you ask? Well, for starters, Tennessee with its strong tradition in music is a perfect fit for Volkswagen’s sponsoring activities. In the past years they have already been active in this area, e.g. as a provider of clean diesel vehicles for the Bonnaroo Festival. Local promoters and event organizers may want to start a dialogue with the people at VW who, in their native Germany, have always shown patronage for the arts and culture in general.

The building in the above picture is called the “Gläserne Manufaktur” (= factory made of glass; Transparent Factory) and it was established by the car maker in 2002 in the East German city of Dresden. It serves as an automobile production facility where VW makes the luxury Phaeton sedan and where Bentley builds some of its models.
On October 18 the “Gläserne Manufaktur” will host all after-show events of the Echo Klassik and VW will shuttle the guests of the awards ceremony from Dresden’s Semperoper to the glass building in – you guessed it – Phaetons.

Can you imagine enjoying concerts at the Volkswagen premises at Enterprise South? Maybe not today, but in the not so distant future the VW plant might be perfectly equipped for musical events. And should this phantasy of mine not pan out, VW could possibly get involved with the many festivals and concerts in and around Chattanooga. They could even rename their BlueTec clean diesel models: how does BluegrassTec sound to you?

With great economic power comes great educational responsibility

With great economic power comes great educational responsibility

You may have noticed that updates at Southeast Schnitzel have been scarce recently. The main reason for that where workshops and presentations I had been working on. To make up for my “blogger’s writers’ block” I will present some of the key elements of my seminars here.

Some of you will remember that I had been posting about the seminar that was meant to prepare local school for the impact of German students and their parents.

That workshop actually took place twice, first at the Cleveland/Bradley County Chamber of Commerce, and once more during the general inservice day for Cleveland City Schools. From the response I got so far, it is fair to conclude that both events were well received and everybody went away from the presentation having learned something new.
Thanks again to the Chattanooga Times Free Press and the Cleveland Daily Banner for their ongoing support in covering the topic.

During the workshop I went through all the major differences between the American and the German educational system – and of course through the many similarities.
The most important thing to keep in mind for educators on both sides of the Atlantic: While the U.S. educational system relies on a single track system, the German school system usually features three or four different tiers in secondary education.

The secondary tracks come with some significant differences in regards to curriculum and academic attainment of their student body. For schools in Southeast Tennessee this means a lot of adjustment and customization when dealing with school-aged children of German parents who are employed with companies like Volkswagen or Wacker Chemie.

To my knowledge there are currently less than 50 German students enrolled in area schools, but already these schools struggle to accomodate their needs. Public schools like Normal Park neither have the necessary staff nor the funding in place to teach their German students what they need to learn, in order to re-enroll smoothly into the German system once their parents’ job assignments in the U.S. are fulfilled.

By the end of the year some insiders expect up to 80 German students in the Chattanooga area – and that is only the number of children who are from Volkswagen families. More international students are likely to arrive in the coming years in connection with the arrival of Wacker Chemie in Bradley County and the expected suppliers for both these industries.

We all expect our communities to benefit a great deal from billion dollar investments like these, but we need to prepare our schools better. One Volkswagen family was able to attend my presentation and was happy to hear that schools in Cleveland are treating this question with a high priority. However, they expressed their concern that Chattanooga/Hamilton County had apparently failed to address educational questions at an earlier stage.

With great economic power comes great educational responsibility.

This doesn’t only apply to our new German friends and their needs. It is also important for American students who hope to land a well-paying job at these companies.

I’ll post more on this issue in the future.