Our story

It all started with an idea. To do social work and let people decide how. At first sight, this may sound banal, like a phrase along the lines of „people must be the centre of attention“. But the focus is always on them. However, letting people decide is more than just a phrase for us. It has been our way of working since the founding of our multicultural non-profit organisation.

This is particularly evident in our project Wir sind Paten, which we started shortly after the founding of our migrant-oriented company in 2015. The aim here is to arrange mentorships between people who need help and those who want to help. How exactly? That is precisely up to the people. They „only“ have to help each other. And the way mentorships are lived is just as varied as the way they are arranged by us.

All our locations have a maximum of freedom, can decide within the framework of the project what and how exactly they want to implement it. In this way, they can find and fill gaps that still exist in the field of social work locally. And this does not work with solutions that are dictated from above. They have to come from the people themselves. From our team on the field and in turn from the people with whom we work every day, whom we can support and from whom we learn.

In this way, very different ideas of what social work looks like, what it is and what it involves have gradually developed at each of our locations. From democracy projects to small group mentorships, social counselling to job coaching or IT projects for children and young people, an enormous thematic range is offered. A range that would not exist today without the engagement of so many people.

And all this engagement would not be so effective if people could not decide for themselves what they do and what they do not do locally. So for us it is more than a phrase: involving as many people as possible and letting them decide awakens positive creativity and is fun.