MakeSense Berlin 2016

August 17, 2016. Berlin, Germany.

We, the founders of Charity Travel, are living in Berlin, in the neighbourhood Prenzlauer Berg, until September 11.
We hope you had a great summer. Some of what we did: Yeon worked on promoting her book.
In July, Kamiel visited the SenseCamp, an unconference for sustainability which had a special focus on the refugee crisis this year.

He found out about some brilliant initiatives that are going on in Berlin.

The Refugee Academy, represented by rhetorically powerful and indefatigableTeekay, made the very good point that well-educated refugees (lawyers, architects, doctors) could and should exchange their knowledge rather than start from scratch with a German course. They offer opportunities in that direction; while people are improving their German, they can already play a meaningful role in society.

Another initiative is TeachSurfing, that wants to build on the trust relations people on Couchsurfing have. This is very similar to our kindmankind.net and I spoke with the founder of TeachSurfing in the Berliner coworking space, ImpactHUB, where she holds office

Another project is Mindful Meerkats, an interesting thesis by Sustainable Development graduate Jonas Wolterstorff. This is an initiative that focuses on boosting people's happiness by improving their mental well-being as well as their ecological footprint. Its aim is to make people conscious about how these are related by representing the various aspects of happiness in a playful way. We had a good conversation and I'm looking forward to some cooperation.

Charity Organizations on kindmankind.net

We could welcome a few new Charity Organizations on kindmankind.net, and are a little proud that this website is now five (!) years old and still online. We've seen other sites come and go. It would be great if more intrepid travelers would head over to kmk and contribute a little write-up about cool charities they visit that just aren't on the radar of courageous volunteers yet. Spread the word!