This morning I received an email from Simon Turschner asking me to look at his new project Vensenya.
http://www.indiegogo.com/vensenya
I did and donated 150 Euro to the project because I think it is just great what Simon plans to do.
I know Simon from a summer academie in Guidel 2008 after he received his master in Biology fighting cancer he decided to join Tech First a model very similar to Tech for America. This is a program where so called high potentials are supposed to teach children with bad social background for two years and help them to find an apprenticeship. I loved his decision and applied for the same position two years later. While in the application process I got my PhD position so I did not pursue the application. Anyway I already wrote about Simon’s older projects in my article: Why education should be a human right.
Now I am happy to see that Simon really is about to found a social entrepreneurship so I was more than happy to support him to realize the first prototype. Together with a friend they plan to create photo stories which should help young people to be motivated and have goals rather than saying: “I won’t be able to do this anyway.” They want to follow the principles of Stanford’s renowned psychologist Carol Dweck This sounds very ambitious but with his two years background of teach first I am very confident that he knows what he is going to do!
Also their plan seems very sound to me:
- They want to do a design thinking workshop together with researchers, psychologists, and of course young people that are the receivers of this kind of education. In this workshop they are about to develop the idea for their first photo story.
- A professional editor is going to write a transcript based on the results from the design thinking workshop.
- Once this is done the shootings will take place
- A communication consultancy will create a web 2.0 media strategy to bring the content out.
All this for just 3000 Euro. I am sure that Simon already worked hard to get all these services and people together for such a low price. So I hope I could convince you as a reader of my blog to also support Simon’s project. If not why don’t you have a look at the small video he created:
Thanks a lot Rene