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We wish you a lucid year, 2021!
A look back at 2020
Starting the new year, we would like to express our gratitude for cooperating with partners, clients, and supporters during 2020. As a team, we were and can continue nearly all projects on our list, thus support important causes, win new clients, and last, but most importantly, stay without serious illnesses.
We want to invite you to look back with us on what happened on-site, on our desks, and during the many video calls with people from all over.
Hello again, Africa!
Started in 2018, we continued our most ambitious pilot project with WIDU in Africa, working with GIZ to support small businesses and their supporters from the European diaspora in Cameroon, Ghana, and, now, Kenya. Since June, via our digital platform, WIDU has been supporting projects by companies from the health, food, or transportation sectors that are important and relevant to the Corona response.
In Abuja, Nigeria, we have been developing with GFA the renewable energy and energy efficiency investment campaign “Green Energy Investment” of the Nigerian Government. Together with Wins Consult we analyzed the Make-IT program’s M&E strategy in 24 African countries and Transparency International’s approach involving women and girls fighting corruption in Zambia.
The global call for Human Rights
We continued our (remote) work with the institutions and organizations in Geneva, Bern, and New York, some of which we have been supporting for almost ten years in the global campaign for human rights. Starting with the relaunch of the Children and Armed Conflict app, working on the relaunch of the Women’s Human Rights App with the IZFG in Bern for EDA, the app of the NGO CSW for women’s rights activists to the web and mobile app “Gender Climate Tracker” of the Women’s Environment & Development Organization.
Additionally, we are very proud and glad to now work with the Center for Women’s Global Leadership at Rutgers University, as our new client in the field of women’s rights.
Public opinion studies and elementary physics
Five years ago, we developed the first branding of Bertelsmann Foundation’s eupinions.eu, the independent platform for European public opinion. This year we produced two trend-setting eupinions studies on the “optimism gap” and “empathy effect” of Europeans.
For a deep scientific insight into processes invisible to the eye, we designed visualizations and animations for the German Electron Synchrotron DESY on the scientific potential of an even brighter particle accelerator PETRA 4 in Hamburg.
Tools for international cooperation
A core requirement for global ecosystems of sustainable development is the successful transfer of knowledge and opportunities for collaboration where they are lacking. With Seek Development, we improved the Donor Tracker in its fourth year, a knowledge-platform that provides knowledge on 80% of the world’s official development assistance. A comparably thoughtful development and optimization process, we continued with the International Tax Compact, adding the domestic revenue mobilization (DRM) database and a phenomenal interactive map to the ATI website.
Hola Latin America!
Amid the first European covid wave, we were able to gain a foothold in Latin America. As our first project explored how rural e-governance can work in post-conflict regions as part of our digital strategy workshop with the GIZ project Paz Comunal in Colombia. We were able to connect to the impact innovation ecosystem in Latin America and established contact with hands-on organizations like Alianza BioCuenca, which is doing great work in socio-environmental development. And with the Centro del Pensamiento Política Publica of the Universidad Nacional, we are exploring collaboration on a political education platform.
Arts = Love
What moved us in 2020 is clear. Let’s move on to what we love. Sure, we love Joseph Beuys, who would be 100 years old in 2021. So what a pleasure to produce and technically implement the online campaign Beuys2021 of North Rhine-Westphalia’s state together with the design studio Cyan. (By the way, if you are the person from the Berlinische Galerie who we neglected to ask for a business card when you visited the office at Fahrbereitschaft, please get in touch!)
And to appropriately end this little travelogue through 2020 with a quote from Joseph Beuys:
“Work only if you feel it will start a revolution.”
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