Two majority LGBTI-staffed children’s nurseries will open in the Schӧneberg district of Berlin in 2023 and are already quickly filling up available spaces.

LGBTI childcarers will open the nurseries in 2023

Following an initiative of the Queer Advice Centre Berlin (Schwulenberatung Berlin), spring 2023 will see the first majority LGBTI-staffed nurseries in Germany open in Berlin. In pedagogical terms the Rosy Tiger and Yellow-Green Panther nurseries(Rosarote Tiger und Gelbgrüne Panther) will not be different from any other nursery, other than primarily being staffed by LGBTI carers.

A flyer states that, in order to get one of the 93 nursery spaces - which in Germany are notoriously hard to find due to childcare staff shortages - parents do not themselves have to be part of the LGBTI community, but rather should understand that at the nurseries “LGBTI lifestyles will be visible and responsive alongside all pedagogical measures”.

A multigenerational building will house the new Berlin nurseries

The nurseries will be situated in a multigenerational house composed of rooms used by Queer Advice Centre Berlin and apartments inhabited by elder members of the LGBTI community who don’t have their own children but would like to make meaningful connections with other families. There will also be a cafe, a meeting room and two housing cooperatives for LGBTI people using care services or attending therapy.

The building complex will only be finished at the end of this year but the nurseries have already filled 60 spaces. “The majority of applications came from families in the neighbourhood who saw our advertisement,” co-founder Peter Duden told Berliner Zeitung. “But around a quarter are parents who stressed in their application that, as queer parents, they had had bad experiences at other nurseries.”