Celebrating holiday season differently

What’s the story behind?

Last year, yet another year of the pandemic, we faced the decision of whether to continue our seasonal marketing activities like we did in previous years or not. Every year during the holiday season we are sending out postal greeting cards to our partners and clients as well as a couple of freelancers we are collaborating with. And in return we receive dozens of these postcards, packages and other greetings of our partners in return. But due to the fact, that it just didn’t feel right to do that while many in our society depend on support, in 2021 we wanted to handle things differently. Rather than spending our money the usual way, we wanted to put this money into good use and donate it to a local organization.

After letting our team collectively decide which organization we would like to support, we chose to give the money to the Esche in Hamburg Altona, an organization that offers creative courses for kids and teenagers for free. From our point of view especially the kids and teenagers have been forgotten during the pandemic. With homeschooling, canceled leisure activities and the reoccurring lockdown-situation, the younger generation seemed to have suffered a lot throughout the year. Many families — and among them many of our colleagues — felt the additional pressure on their shoulders. A balancing act only managed by perseverance combined with positive thinking.

The ‘Esche — your free space’ is a local youth art center in Altona and with their courses they offer a variety of dance classes, as well as a theatre program, graffiti courses and other painting activities. They provide a space of tolerance and creativity and aim to get in touch especially with those who can’t afford the classes elsewhere. In their vacation program they also serve lunch meals for the kids and teenagers coming to their facilities. Their team dedicates their time since 2015 for this amazing project and since then they’ve created a place for all to collectively express their creativity and reach beyond their limits.

What did we do?

One additional step regarding our idea was not only collecting money but also raising awareness for their awesome and important project. We wanted to involve our partners and clients. So we did what we do best — we set up a factorial christmas landing page to inform our network about our idea. This has been the smallest project we have been working on so far, given the fact that we finished it within only three weeks. 

The users could send a message to us within the landing page which was displayed in a feed later on. We also implemented a counter to the message feed that added 15€ for each message (*we started with 5€ but ended up with raising the amount because we received so much positive feedback). In the end we faced a total amount of 1.600€ and we couldn’t be more happy about it. 

The result

After we contacted the Esche regarding our idea, the head of the organization, Andreas, reached out and invited us to their facilities in order to give us a little tour and to tell us about their work. He and his colleague have truly created a neutral space where creativity can flow. It was so nice getting some insights about the Esche and we are impressed what they have already achieved in such a short time. 

With our donation Andreas and his team are able to continue and extend their important and passionate work. And since they didn’t expect our donation, they now can offer the kids and teenagers an additional full-week creative class this year, which makes not only them but also us very happy.

If you are interested about their amazing projects, you can find more info about the Esche here. 

We would like to thank everyone involved in this, our team and all of the people in our network that supported the idea.