Offerings like Anna Troia's are ideal for refugees or people learning German as a second language who face financial hardship. They want to contribute, feel recognized, and know they hold a valued place in society. Yet public discourse routinely labels them "socially weak"—a fundamentally flawed piece of framing.
In our society, we have agreed that we hand over certain kinds of thinking and delegate them to institutions. One of these institutions is the media, which in turn are fed by politicians. There are certain language patterns and phrases that we hear again and again; that is how narratives get spread through society, and we humans are used to adopting these narratives. One of these narratives is exactly this label and division into “the socially weak” (sozial Schwache). By the way, there is no antonym for it at all: we don’t say “socially strong”—instead we maybe say “upper middle class” or “the wealthy”. The danger I see here is that we simply adopt things without questioning them. When we say “socially weak”, what we actually mean is the structurally disadvantaged—because precisely these so-called socially weak groups are very strong in the social sphere, in their social skills, because otherwise they couldn’t survive at all.
In reality, surviving on basic social security forces people to build exceptionally strong social networks. When a single mother receives no child support and her washing machine breaks down, money isn't what saves her—trusted social bonds do. She needs reliable contacts who can repair the machine or help her source a used one. These individuals are not socially weak; they are socially resilient and strong.
You can see this concretely in the way people communicate who depend on the Jobcenter, or marginalized groups such as refugees who have come here: they mostly don’t communicate in public. For example, they don’t use open social networks like LinkedIn, but mainly closed social groups like WhatsApp or Telegram—messenger services whose content is not indexed by Google or other search engines.
There, of course, they depend on a form of trust that works on a personal level. Trust here doesn’t play out on an institutional level, but in a completely personal way. Refugees from Ukraine, for example, communicate mainly in WhatsApp or Telegram groups, and there they have to trust people and make personal decisions themselves: Can I trust this person or not? Meanwhile, people who move in higher social strata can rely on institutions, structures and hierarchies and delegate this “vetting”—this process of checking—to lobbies, organizations and professionals.
We can leverage this exact strength to expand the Pay What You Can (PWYC) model. Alongside money, we need an explicit non-monetary option: sharing offerings within established community channels, such as Telegram or WhatsApp groups. Many individuals don't realize the immense value their networks hold. Platforms like Diana Osterhage's Wandelkraft should explicitly spell out these options on their websites. This social leverage often yields a far greater impact for the common good than a small monetary contribution ever could.
What do you take away from this thought?
Thank you. Every answer fits – take it with you into your day. Would you like to share something yourself?
