Why I Am a Member of the VdK

The Sozialverband VdK Deutschland has more than 2.3 million members and over 60,000 volunteers. For more than 75 years, it has described its mission as standing up for social justice.

I am one of those people.

And the longer I am involved with the VdK, the more I find myself thinking about a seemingly simple question: What kind of organization is this that I am part of?

Part of Our Social System

At the VdK, I meet many people who have spent their professional lives working within the health or social care system. People from nursing, medicine, public administration, and other social professions.

Many of them have spent decades helping others. They have taken responsibility, cared for people, supported them, advised them, and accompanied them through difficult situations. And many want to continue doing exactly that after retirement.

That deserves my respect.

At the same time, I see how difficult it can be to fundamentally question a system that you have been part of for a long time. Criticism of the healthcare system can quickly feel like criticism of your own work, perhaps even of what you have devoted your life to.

Yet two things can be true at the same time: I can have spent my entire life helping people to the best of my knowledge and ability. And I can have been part of a system that failed other people.

Perhaps even a system that harmed some of them.

One does not make the other untrue.

The Other Side

But at the VdK, I also meet people with very different stories.

People who have become ill. People with disabilities. People caring for family members. People who depend on social benefits or who have spent years fighting for support on which their very existence depends.

Some have experienced things that give them every reason to be outraged.

And some are outraged.

That, too, is part of the VdK for me.

These people do not necessarily arrive speaking the language of public administration, organizations, or executive boards. Sometimes they arrive carrying a thick folder. Sometimes with a story that is almost impossible to untangle. Sometimes angry, desperate, or distrustful.

And sometimes they are left remarkably alone with it.

That, in particular, troubles me.

Because if the VdK is also an organization of people who are themselves affected, then surely these experiences should be of particular value to it.

Not because people who are affected are automatically right.

But because their experiences may reveal something that is difficult to see from inside a system that appears to be functioning.

Closeness Has Value

Over the decades, the VdK has built structures and relationships. It has access to politics and public administration. At the local level, people know one another. Mayors attend events, elected representatives give speeches, and VdK representatives appear at receptions and on panels.

And, of course, this produces plenty of perfectly harmless photographs.

At first, I see nothing problematic about that. Quite the opposite: an advocacy organization that can talk directly to political decision-makers has achieved something valuable.

But here, too, two things can be true at the same time.

Closeness can create influence.

And closeness can make it more difficult to maintain distance.

An organization that seeks to represent people whose experiences with established institutions have been difficult probably needs both: access to the system and independence from it.

What Is the VdK?

Perhaps that is precisely why the VdK is not so easy to describe.

It is a large social association with professional structures.

It is a political advocacy organization.

It provides legal advice on social welfare matters.

It is an established part of Germany’s social landscape.

And at the same time, it consists of millions of people, many of whom know from their own experience what it means to be ill, disabled, in need of care, or dependent on support.

For me, this creates a tension that cannot simply be resolved by a constitution or a mission statement:

Is the VdK primarily an institution for people who are affected — or an institution of those people themselves?

Perhaps there is no need to choose between the two answers.

But I think it is important to notice the difference.

An organization can function extremely well, be respected by society, maintain good relationships, and help many people — and still run the risk of becoming less able to hear precisely those whose experiences are uncomfortable.

And conversely, outrage alone is not enough to sustain an organization or bring about political change.

Each needs the other.

Perhaps that is an essential part of what the VdK means to me — and of what is worth struggling over.

I am a member of this association. I am actively involved in it.

And that is why I want to understand what I experience there.