Since 16 November 2021, the German Caritas Association, based in Freiburg im Breisgau, has a new president. Ms Eva Maria Welskop-Deffaa replaces the previous President Peter Neher, who did not reapply for the office after an 18-year term. This makes Ms Welskop-Deffaa the first woman in the almost 125-year history at the head of the German Caritas Association with its almost 700,000 employees and hundreds of thousands of volunteers. For her, the digital transformation is a matter close to her heart: getting actively involved in digital development projects and making it clear that related ethical issues do not have to be dealt with downstream. Taking a close look at digital opportunities for participation and working out mechanisms of digitalisation that lead to the exclusion of people and that can improve opportunities for participation. These and other tasks have already been taken on by the German Caritas Association – for the benefit of the poor and excluded – within the framework of its digital strategy and will be taken on more intensively in the future. The cooperation of the German Caritas Association in the scientific accompanying project BeBeRobot is a building block in this.
