How can a community be successfully empowered to deal with death, dying, and bereavement?-formative evaluation of the Caring Community Cologne using focus groups.

The top-down approach described, supported by the city's engagement and involving existing initiatives can facilitate the development of a bottom-up civic engagement model in a large city. However, active citizen involvement appeared to be a challenge. The Throughput Model was a suitable basis for mapping work processes and developing evaluation plans.