For the PROJECT-E team in Europe, October was strongly marked by the fundraising competition “1000€ für 1000 Vereine“ organised by ING-DiBa bank. The competition aims at supporting NGOs and charity organisations: During a six-week long time period, people can vote via a secure one-person-one-vote principle for the different participating organisations on the Ing-DiBa website. Those organisations ranking among the 200 organisations with most votes in their size category win 1000 Euro.
As this competition posed an amazing chance to fund PROJECT-E‘s work, we were immediately motivated to put all our effort into that competition. The first step of our strategy was to mobilise our personal network — so family, friends and even forgotten contacts got at least 2 reminders to vote for PROJECT-E. In a next step, PROJECT-E‘s social media channels were put under a lot of strain to promote the competition and win supporters. Last but not least, group emails were sent out to all members and alumni to remind them of promoting the Ing-DiBA challenge again, and again. Initially, we were optimistic to get ranked among the winning organisations, however, we quickly realized that the other organisations did not put less effort into mobilising supporters for their cause. Especially when the deadline on 7th November neared, all organisation could mobilise many more votes,
so that the ranking changed tremendously every few minutes. Even though the competition stayed exiting till the last minute we eventually achieved rank 80 out of over 1700 making us one of the winner of 1000 Euro.
Besides this happy financial ending of this fundraising event, the whole competition has shown the potential of Team Europe: Despite the team members’ geographical distance, we were able to set up three physical promotion events at three different German cities.
The challenge was carried by an extraordinary positive energy among all team members. It has proven again that despite the challenge of remote working places, Team Europe is hold together by both an exceptional team spirit and the shared dedication to the organisational goal of women empowerment in Ethiopia allowing us to suit action to our word.
