What happened to Vensenya's "Changing mindset" project?

Rene — Thu, 02 Apr 2015 12:27:12 +0000

Two and a half years ago I posted about Simons project which at that time was just starting and to me still very fuzzy. Still I donated 150 Euro and asked others to do the same. It was the trust I had in him that it would be working out great even though it was still not clear how.
Today I have received an email, that the project has become much more focused and will be finally going public in September 2015. The will produce a tv series that will be published on youtube. Have a look at their trailer in German language.

Together with youngsters they produce a series about the live and problems and challenges of youngsters. They try to focus on a growing mind set approach that comes from “I can never do this” and focuses on “I will be able to do this.” The best thing is the authenticity of the project. It is done with non professional actors, cameramen, cutters. Also the equipment is borrowed. It seems that the project will get a really high quality but is kind of low budget – right in the sense of: “Of course we can do this if we really want to and we don’t need much money.”
In that spirit they have a second crowd founding campaign (which I guess is much more about publicity than really attracting money) which I warmly recommend to support:
https://socialimpactfinance.startnext.com/kaempfergeist
I will certainly keep you up to date as soon as the result will be published! But first I will send an email to Simon and ask him if it will be possible to use an open license for the material. I guess they want to earn money by licensing but still for a social and crowd founded project I think an open license would be appropriate.

Support Simon Turschner's project Vensenya to help children in need

Rene — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 04:44:10 +0000

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

Vensenya – Data Science, Data Analytics and Machine Learning Consulting in Koblenz Germany

What happened to Vensenya's "Changing mindset" project?

Support Simon Turschner's project Vensenya to help children in need