The Aurora Humanitarian Project for UWC Schools and Colleges (AHP) aims to encourage students from all UWC schools and colleges to set up or further develop service projects that tackle humanitarian issues geographically local or relevant to the ethos of the specific school or college. The AHP is part of the Aurora Humanitarian Initiative which was set up to raise public awareness around humanitarian issues and was inspired by the stories of bravery, survival and compassion during the Armenian Genocide. Wanting to celebrate the strength of the human spirit and generosity a century later, the Aurora Humanitarian Initiative wishes to recognise projects that demonstrate dedication to achieving meaningful impact - and since 2017 includes the AHP to focus on UWC schools and colleges. Three UWC colleges were chosen to proceed to the final round of the Aurora Humanitarian Project for UWC Schools and Colleges. The finalists are: Waterford Kamhlaba UWC of Southern Africa in Swaziland, UWC Robert Bosch College in Germany and UWC Mahindra College in India. Below is the executive summary of the project by UWC Robert Bosch College.
DoGood.shop
The DoGood.shop project aims to support social organisations by providing a non-profit online marketplace to sell upcycled and handmade products made by refugees and other vulnerable people. The project will provide an online platform for participating social organisations to gain more exposure, network with each other and fundraise by prompting customers to make additional donations when they purchase products. In the long term, the project also aims to empower refugees by providing them with IT training to work on the project themselves and by helping them gain the education and qualifications to find jobs.
To make this happen, we have reached out to local social organisations to form partnerships. Our first partner is the ParitätischenWohlfahrtsverband Hessen – a central umbrella organization of social welfare. It includes around 8500 members of social organisations and is one of the six largest public welfare organisations in Germany. Secondly, one of their member organisations, the AKGG GmbH, will be the first non-profit organisation to sell their products on DoGood.shop. They are also sponsoring the online marketplace and will carry out the operative functions of the platform. Furthermore, we are supported by the company B.Braun AG, which has provided us with IT and Marketing workshops.
Among others, the refugee crisis is a humanitarian issue that is affecting many countries in Europe, particularly Germany, which took in more than 1 million refugees in 2015. The challenge of integrating the influx of refugees has become one of the most pressing challenges that Germany now faces.
Our project thus aims to address this issue by offering a tool to help with the integration of refugees. We believe that providing refugees with education, qualification and training to find jobs is one of the keys to integration. Thus, this online platform will support social organisations that are doing such work.
The biggest challenge we expect to have to overcome in order to implement the project is being able to secure the required resources, time and effective communication needed to ensure that everything runs successfully. So far, it has taken a great deal of time and commitment to organise meetings, project weeks and liaise with our partner organisations. As the project grows and more social organisations join our online marketplace, effective communication will become all the more important. Thus, after graduating, one of our team members plans to start a trainee programme with the AKGG to help us overcome this challenge.
The Aurora prize money would be used to support the acquisition of national and international suppliers and customers. It is very important for us that the idea behind DoGood.shop is represented in the products, the suppliers and the cooperation partners. Therefore, money from the prize will be used for translating website content into different languages, packages and flyers, workshops for different IT skills for international marketing.
Team members:
1. Mohamed Salah – Web and Graphic Designer, 1st year student, Egypt
2. Ravindra Mahapatra – Marketing Team, 2nd year student, UK
3. Imaculada Adolfo – Content Team, 2nd year student, Angola
4. Kento Suzuki – Content Team, 1st year student, Japan
5. Haider Ali – Content Team, 1st year student, Pakistan
6. Katarina Beckman – UWCSEA alum and alum advisor, UWCRBC teacher, Singapore
7. Julia Angstenberger – UWCRBC communications manager, Germany
The project proposal by Waterford Kamhlaba UWC of Southern Africa is available here.
The project proposal by UWC Mahindra College is available here.