Description

In this episode, we explore the innovative Spaanse Polder Café in Rotterdam, an initiative fostering dialogue on urban security, crime prevention, and community cohesion to tackle the issues of organised crime in the Spaanse Polder area in Rotterdam. Joined by Wouter Gelderloos and Mees Verkerk, we discuss how this initiative, using the World Café method, brings together entrepreneurs, workers, and the police forces.

➡️An episode moderated by Elizabeth Johnston, Efus' Executive Director

It was produced as part of the IcARUS project funded by the European Commission. This project received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement no. 882749.

Hosted by Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Transcription

• Elizabeth Johnston

  Welcome to the Efus podcast, a podcast produced by the European Forum for Urban Security, in collaboration with the ICARUS Project, Innovative Approaches to Urban Security. I'm Elizabeth Johnston, the Executive Director of Efus, the European network of 250 local and regional authorities dedicated to urban security funds. I'm very glad today to be joined by Wout Helderlaus, Account Manager Companies, Spanze Polder, as well as by Meis Verwer. City of Rotterdam, project employee of Spaanse Polder. Welcome to both of you. Today we're going to talk about the Sponsor Boulder Cafe, which is a recurring interactive forum in the Sponsor Boulder area in Rotterdam. It provides a platform for discussing local issues, particularly safety and security, including organized crimes between entrepreneurs, workers, and policemen of the area. Using the World Café format, the event encourages progressive community involvement from initial curiosity to active participation. Mees, could you start by describing for our listeners how the café is set up, what it looks like and how it works?

• Mees Verkerk

  The Spaanse Polder Café is a moving café. It takes part in different businesses in the area. So every time it is, we visit another business. It's really like a café vibe. So there are standing tables, there's a bar, and we work with a presentation. The Council of Entrepreneurs tells something, the municipality tells something. And then from there, we go to the World Cafe Method. And everybody goes to a table, writes down what they think about certain topics like safety and security, but also resilience, economics, mobility. Things that are important for the entrepreneurs in the area. And then we... move so they can see the answers before them gave and they can build upon that so you create something new new ideas come up and yeah get a really good idea what takes part in the area and what entrepreneurs think and afterwards everybody gets a drink and gets to talk to each other and make new connections i think in short that's the spanish portal cafe

• Elizabeth Johnston

  Yeah, on a very concrete level, I remember you all had also a nice visual identity, some marketing tools in a way to promote the initiative.

• Mees Verkerk

  Yeah, we were really visible and recognizable for the entrepreneurs. They really knew what it was and people talked about it. And I think that's the cafe part of the Span-Sported Cafe was really important to lure people to the sessions because they got their beer, they got their wine. get to talk to each other and know new people and new connections are made there. Business to business, but also business for the public sector.

• Elizabeth Johnston

  Wout, would you like to add anything to this description?

• Wouter Gelderloos

  We've got a few different business clubs in the Spaanse polder with very low activity. And then there's a small but very active business club, but there's only 15 members. The Spaanse polder cafe goes in the middle of that. It combines fun, with discussion, doing business to business, and talking about major issues for the area.

• Elizabeth Johnston

  Wout, can you tell us a little bit what you thought of the Spaanse Polder Café initiative at first and how it was presented to you?

• Wouter Gelderloos

  To be honest, I was a bit skeptical. We use the method of the World Café in the Netherlands for over 25 years now. Me, myself, I used it often, participation processes in living areas, and we even tried it in the Sponsor Polder. However, it turned out to be a success because of the co-ownership of the community, the city of Rotterdam, and the board of offices, which is active in the area. To use it as a common tool, make it a lot more co-owned process, which stands for success.

• Elizabeth Johnston

  Mace, can you tell us what problem we were trying to tackle with this new initiative and why the World Café format?

• Mees Verkerk

  When ICARUS did the research in the Spaanse polder... about safety they really saw two different things they saw the entrepreneurs and employees didn't know the signals of subversive crime and where to go with these signals and they saw there was a lack of social cohesion in the area between the entrepreneurs and the employees so people didn't really know their neighbor and with the span supporter cafe and the world's cafe method they tried to tackle these two issues so the world cafe methods people could build upon each other's knowledge about crime, but also other things. And they could fill the void. They left each other, inspire each other to create a broader scope of the area and the signals of crime. And the cafe part was to bring the people together and create a sort of social cohesion here in the area.

• Elizabeth Johnston

  So you mentioned the topic of subversive crime and organized crime. How do we create social cohesion around such a complicated topic?

• Mees Verkerk

  I think you must see it as... two different things but I think the social cohesion plays a part in it because if you have social cohesion in the area people are on the streets people know each other's neighbors know what happens in the building next to them. It's harder for crime to take place in certain buildings because people know each other. I think that's well known that if people know each other, the crime will go down because you take part in anonymity because everybody knows each other.

• Elizabeth Johnston

  And do you feel companies were reluctant to address the issue of crime in the area head on?

• Wouter Gelderloos

  We've been working on crime for eight years now. Very intensive. And Companies were getting a bit tired of it. You must understand that companies used to see safety as a duty of the government. And they won't take their own responsibility. And indeed, we as a government took the responsibility to put down the crime. To get it to an acceptable level. Where the Spaanse Polder Café helped us in was to point more directly at what... companies could do themselves. How do they could contribute to safety to make them more aware indeed?

• Elizabeth Johnston

  So the topic of co-production and the methods of co-production were really at the center of the discussions.

• Wouter Gelderloos

  That's the main part and that's where the World Café has proven to be very successful and very useful.

• Elizabeth Johnston

  And Mace, do you see also changes in the interactions between the entrepreneurs, people who work in the area, the police officers as well?

• Mees Verkerk

  Yeah, I see more entrepreneurs come to these sessions. So you know a lot more people. And I think a lot more of informal concepts are created there. So it's easier to see each other and to call each other. It's much more easy than it was before. Before we had a group of entrepreneurs who we well knew, but it was always the same ones. And now we get new ones.

• Elizabeth Johnston

  Has it also changed the perspective that police officers might have of the area?

• Mees Verkerk

  I don't know. don't think it changed their perspective but I think with the Spaanse Polder Cafe they know more entrepreneurs and they also for the crime section of the the World Cafe Method they were the table hosts so they talked to the entrepreneurs and they saw their vision and I think that was really nice and it also involved the entrepreneurs that they saw a policeman really hear them and writing their things down so I think that helped.

• Elizabeth Johnston

  So those interactions help create trust also between the entrepreneurs and the local police?

• Mees Verkerk

  Yes, trust and informal contacts, I think. So you can call your neighborhood police and don't call the broader police number. So it's much more accessible for a lot of people.

• Elizabeth Johnston

  So the first topics really focused on crime. Have there been other topics that have been discussed in the cafe?

• Mees Verkerk

  Yeah, like Wout said, we talked about the economics of the area. We talked about education. We talked about resilience and mobility. Wout, did I forget something? No,

• Wouter Gelderloos

  that's quite complete. What I found out during the cafes, that the government and the companies found a different tone of speech, which was far more open. And it became easier to understand each other and to take the different points of views. The government understands the needs of the companies better and the companies are beginning to... understand that the government works very slow and have to level different needs of different parties.

• Elizabeth Johnston

  Wout, can you share your thoughts on how this initiative has encouraged local businesses to take responsibility for safety?

• Wouter Gelderloos

  Companies taking their responsibility comes and goes. There are about 1600 businesses in the Spansepolder area and we're very... proud that we're connected to some two or three hundred of those companies. They are really active as taking responsibility, going for the dialogue, are no more than 50 or 100 companies. The second part, the companies who are interested and who want to make, to take their own responsibility for crime, they got connected to police officers and community workers like us. However, We can still see that the one who connects most to one of the companies is the one person who goes in. A lot of companies I used to work with a long time ago still call me on matters of safety. Nowadays, MACE is a lot. on the streets, people get connected to MACE.

• Elizabeth Johnston

  And MACE, what kind of indicators can you have on the impact of the Spanspolder Café on safety and security?

• Mees Verkerk

  Now, like Wout said, a lot of people come to me and Wout for this type of things. But I think the Spanspolder Café is a good method to build bridges between the other professionals who work on safety and between the entrepreneurs. So when they know each other and they talk to each other, they will call each other. And entrepreneurs had some good ideas about some things like treats app where they could call could give signals to each other and yeah, more on the safety and livability together. So they could do some things together. I think that's where some really good ideas in the Spansport Cafe. But direct safety measures, I don't think we saw them yet. But maybe in the future. I think the social cohesion could be a big part in that.

• Wouter Gelderloos

  We really miss good measuring. instruments. We tried developing better measurements, but the difficulty is that the Spaanse polder as a business area is quite unique compared to other areas. Also, we don't have historical data. We should add that the problems we see is not the usual criminality, like people burglaring or getting into houses. It's what we call the undermining criminality. mostly has to do with drugs. And it's not very easy to measure the impact of drugs crime, of drugs activity.

• Elizabeth Johnston

  Can you give us examples of how you see this drug crime manifest itself in the neighborhood and for the entrepreneurs themselves?

• Wouter Gelderloos

  Mostly the renters will see the negative effects of drugs activity. They see their buildings tear down, there are fires. The biggest problem for them is that we as a government close their buildings once we see there's drugs deals there or drugs produced but it's very difficult to see for common companies to see what happens in in the building next to them did the sponsboulder cafe uh uncover

• Elizabeth Johnston

  or reveal needs for a lot of training and awareness raising also among employees yeah that was one thing that

• Mees Verkerk

  Icarus came up with. They saw that was missing in the span supporter, but it's like really hard, but we tried it with drugs container. So we put a drugs container, like an experience in the street. So people knew how it looked like, how it smells, what the signals were. But I think employees only come here to work and then they go home. They don't really feel ownership about the area, but when there is something really wrong. They will notice and they will chat to each other and somebody will tell it. But it's really, really hard to see. Also for us, what happens behind closed doors?

• Wouter Gelderloos

  I think it's important what Mace says. Workers, companies itself, but especially workers are not very connected to the area. It's not important what happens in the building next to them. It's important to make money. It's important to rent a cheap building. That's the focus of companies. We don't get clients in the area. It's strictly business to business, all by phone and all by big transport. We don't see people. So it doesn't have to be attractive.

• Elizabeth Johnston

  Except it has to be attractive to employees coming in. Do you feel that they had a fear of crime or a feeling that the area was unsafe?

• Wouter Gelderloos

  And we still see that, especially a few of the companies are working 24 hours a day, seven days a week. the night shift comes in at 11 o'clock night and then it's very unsafe in the area so it's it's even difficult to find good personnel for that time of work because of the safety problems indeed i think it's also important to take

• Mees Verkerk

  two things apart we can talk about the subjective safety so how people feel and we can talk about the hard crime numbers in the area and they like really different and if we don't have the hard crime numbers it's hard to act for us and for the police but how people feel in the area and if they feel safe is really important especially by night what are you going to set up so that this initiative is able to be sort of sustained throughout time and keep going well

• Wouter Gelderloos

  the government committed to a long time involvement in the we actually are working on a big program for the next years and we're going to invests over millions of euros. We keep being in the area, which is a main point in our approach all the time. We've got our own office in the midst of the area. We're working from there. You can find police officers with Mace and me as well and our co-workers, you can find us on the streets in discussion with companies.

• Elizabeth Johnston

  So you're showing very physically that you're here to stay and to continue to co-produce the safety. What advice would you give to other cities that are interested in setting up such a partnership and co-production facility?

• Wouter Gelderloos

  That's exactly, as you pointed out, it's the partnership and the co-production. Don't use this World Cafe method as a communication tool. It's a participation tool. You should make... the entrepreneur's co-owner of the tool, of the system. That's a big success. We used the World Cafe method in the sponsor pool.

• Elizabeth Johnston

  How would one respond to entrepreneurs saying, this is not my problem, I don't have time to invest even in a conversation about safety and security?

• Wouter Gelderloos

  In my opinion, offices or entrepreneurs shouldn't be obliged to be a member of a board, to unite. to get the area better. We are much more successful by getting the dialogue with the interested parties and just not all the parties, but find out the active parties who are striving for a better surrounding.

• Elizabeth Johnston

  Mace, do you agree that the way to go is to incentivize these business owners and not oblige them to sit around and co-produce safety and security?

• Mees Verkerk

  No, I think Wout is right. You really have to find... the entrepreneurs that really want to and they make time for it they work hard and they can pull other entrepreneurs in so you make the group of entrepreneurs who's involved bigger bigger and bigger it will never be the whole area but when you have enough entrepreneurs you have enough people and you can stand up and make something beautiful of the area and i think it's important for other cities to be determined in to involve people otherwise it won't be a success We have a few initiatives like this, which failed. But I think the co-ownership makes it work and makes it work in the future.

• Elizabeth Johnston

  And on the city side, are there any conditions or keys to success as well?

• Mees Verkerk

  Finance the whole thing. I think that's really important. Also listen to the entrepreneurs, show results. Not only hear things, but show them what you do with it and make it accessible. Make it nice, go visit some companies. So people look. into their neighbor's business. That's really important and it works really well for us to see what happens in the building of the neighbor.

• Elizabeth Johnston

  Thank you, Wout. And thank you, Mace, for sharing your experience and expertise on this Rotterdam initiative. Thank you.

• Mees Verkerk

  Thank you.

• Elizabeth Johnston

  We hope you've enjoyed this episode, which was produced in the framework of the IcARUS project, Innovative Approaches to Urban Security, funded by the European Commission. We look forward to sharing more insights and discussions with you in the future. So don't forget to subscribe to this podcast and visit our website. Stay tuned for the next episode of the Efus podcast.