The DKB FOUNDATION is an independent foundation dedicated to promoting inclusion, sustainability, and cultural projects in rural areas. It was founded by DKB in 2004 to bring together the operational activities and projects of DKB’s social commitment under one roof.
The foundation’s seat, Liebenberg Castle & Estate, is the basis for our roots in the rural area and a meeting place, workplace, place for learning, farm, and place of culture.
The DKB FOUNDATION includes the inclusion companies DKB FOUNDATION Liebenberg gGmbH, Liebenberg Castle, and the DKB FOUNDATION Jugenddörfer gGmbH, each with affiliated inclusion departments.
Our values
We are practice-oriented
We work on site with people on our properties and in our subsidiaries to create a liveable future. In this way, we overcome very real problems with very real action.
We are inspiring
Because we give people in the region direct impetus for change within their own living environment. We motivate, empower, and encourage young people and adults in educational projects on topics and issues of sustainable development.
We are integrative/inclusive
We see diversity as an opportunity and exemplify inclusive coexistence that enables participation for all. We employ people with and without disabilities and ensure that prejudices, contact fears, and barriers are broken down.
Our companies
The inclusion company
The DKB FOUNDATION Liebenberg gGmbH is not only one of the largest inclusion companies in Brandenburg, it is also a particularly important part of the DKB FOUNDATION. Participation and inclusion are the literal program here. In our inclusion company based at Liebenberg Castle & Estate, we show how barriers can be broken down by enabling inclusive and equal participation in the primary labour market
The Youth Villages
With our youth villages, the youth village at the Ruppiner See and the Euroville Youth and Sports Hotel, we enable families and groups to experience community and retreat, even with limited financial means. Above all, we accommodate young guests on school trips and vacation camps. The youth villages also offer ideal conditions for training camps, conferences, and club trips.
The hotel
The castle and the lake house are used by our subsidiary DKB FOUNDATION Liebenberg Castle GmbH as a hotel with restaurant. We thus offer an extraordinary possibility for events in the region. We have made it our mission to renovate and maintain the castle, the farm buildings, and the landscape park in accordance with the requirements of monument preservation. We provide information about the history and significance of the ensemble in guided tours through the estate and the park.
Our founder
What a bank can do – what a foundation can do:
Our similarities, our differences
Both, DKB and DKB FOUNDATION, want to be shapers of a liveable and sustainable society. As a #geldverbesserer [money improver], DKB therefore prefers to invest in what people need to live. For example, the construction of daycare centres, nursing homes, hospitals and affordable housing, the financing of the energy turnaround, and domestic agriculture. In addition, we develop ideas in the DKB FOUNDATION on how to secure and improve coexistence and participation in rural areas – and implement these ideas in exemplary fashion. This allows us to promote social development.
We provide jobs in structurally weak areas and enable access to culture. Together with young people, we develop perspectives and create spaces for experiencing community: for example, in projects in which people experience that what they shape and decide has an effect and is important. Both DKB and DKB FOUNDATION want sustainable management and action to become noticeable and tangible for all people. The DKB FOUNDATION networks rural actors and good ideas emerge from the work in the subsidiaries and fields of action. Good ideas become projects, projects become models, models in turn become lived reality. And it is this vision of a living, sustainable reality that connects DKB and DKB FOUNDATION at their core.
As a bank, DKB finances a large number of projects in rural areas. As a foundation, on the other hand, we ourselves develop very specific ideas for how life and work in rural areas can be shaped in terms of participation and sustainability. In accordance with our statutes, we act independent of the founder.
Board of Trustees of the DKB FOUNDATION
Stefan Unterlandstättner
Chairman of the Board of Trustees
Tilo Hacke
Member of the Board of Trustees
Jan Walther
Member of the Board of Trustees
Arnulf Keese
Member of the Board of Trustees
Kristina Mikenberg
Member of the Board of Trustees
Board of Directors
Axel Kasterich, CEO
