North Rhine-Westphalia is a family-friendly state, family-friendliness can be experienced directly where you live. The local authorities make a decisive contribution to this. Whether low-threshold advice or support services, a wide range of leisure and educational activities for young people, participatory intergenerational projects or the involvement of children and parents in planning processes: Many local authorities are increasingly thinking about administration from the perspective of families.
Under the motto "Family. Community. Cohesion.", the North Rhine-Westphalian state government is once again recognizing municipalities that are particularly committed to family friendliness on the ground. The municipalities were invited to apply for the "Family Municipality 2025" award with their overall family policy concepts or innovative individual family policy projects.
An independent jury made up of representatives from the Ministry of Family Affairs, academia, family associations and Prognos AG selected this year's winning municipalities.
The four municipalities impressed the jury with their diverse and effective approaches. They will receive the "Family Municipality 2025" award, which comes with prize money of 10,000 euros each, at the award ceremony on October 28, 2025.
"My warmest congratulations to the four winning municipalities! Family life takes place locally first and foremost. That is why the creative and innovative commitment of municipalities in this area is particularly important. With this award, we want to honor the particularly committed municipalities and make their projects known throughout North Rhine-Westphalia. The award-winning projects will then certainly also provide inspiration for other municipalities."
Family-friendly living can look very different. On the following pages, we present the four award-winning municipalities in more detail.
The "Family Municipality" state prize was awarded for the first time in 2024. With this award, the North Rhine-Westphalian state government recognizes the commitment of municipalities to family friendliness and helps to make innovative projects and good practice examples known throughout the state - as both inspiration and a blueprint.
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