ABSTRACT
The non-profit association Aktion Demenz is a German-wide initiative that developed out of the 2006 workshop 'Together for a Better Life with Dementia', organised by the Robert Bosch Foundation. It aims to improve the lives of people with dementia, primarily through public dialogue, and to raise awareness for this variation or manifestation of life. Aktion Demenz initiates a public discourse on how citizens affected by dementia could be approached openly and in a spirit of solidarity within local communities, and 2008 funding programme 'People in the Community Living with Dementia', which is implemented three times since then. The focus of the third and last iteration of the programme was on developing individual aspects of the approach of dementia-friendly communities in more detail and improving its transfer to other domains. Zygmunt Baumann (2007) provides an acute analysis of this crisis of communality, which particularly affects people with dementia, and discusses the ongoing dissolution of social bonds and social cohesion through modernisation.
