In September 2017 we received the happy news that we were selected for the startsocial Scholarship, a consulting scholarship under the patronage of chancellor Angela Merkel. Until today, the scholarship has helped us a lot to make a lot of progress and it has not come to an end yet.
The startsocial Scholarship aims at promoting voluntary engagement in Germany. Over four months, each selected project works closely together with two experts from the private sector or NGOs. Not only do they bring their expertise and knowledge from their own work, but also they provide a professional outsider perspective as well a network of relevant contacts.
Since the start of our scholarship, we have met our coaches several times and worked closely together to develop a project document with realistic goals that we can reach until the end of February, given that we work hard and motivated (which we obviously always do :-)). It was incredibly helpful to get support for priority setting and some external perspective on what seems realistic.
We are working hard to achieve our goals, – a new “home” for mimycri, an additional legal format which better represents our identity, increasing product orders in order to engage even more people with displacement experiences in the project.
On 12 January, Nora and Vera participated at the startsocial Scholarship day in Berlin, a fantastic all-day event, at which around 250 people came together. Everyone exchanged ideas, contacts and a lot of laughter. Not only could we learn a lot and meet a lot of inspiring people, but also we felt not being alone in trying to create a better tomorrow. All around Germany, there are people who believe that it’s possible to do so and who dedicate their time and energy to it. The motivation we got from this atmosphere is invaluable.
Now, we are doing our best to get invited to the prize ceremony in Berlin in spring to get the chance to win, even possibly the special award by Angela Merkel. Who knows, dreams can come true, we have certainly learned this over the past year.
If you want to learn more about the startsocial Scholarship, you can find more information here.