Hautfarben | Colors of Our Lives

Sky blue, azure and turquoise - our language knows many shades of color. For pastel pink, there is even a unique word: “skin color”.

But is this still true? Our societies and people are already full of colors. Our language cannot always keep up. Let’s change this together and finally make the term "skin color" as diverse as it really is: from light to dark and for all possible shades so that "skin color" no longer refers to only one color but to the whole spectrum of skin tones that we see among us!

GoVolunteer’s "skin tone" pencils are a thought-provoking and creative gift for families with children who can finally paint people as they are: colorful and diverse! We want all of us to learn from our children. Because children do not put people in boxes - they simply look and draw what they see. Let’s do away with our biases! Germany IS a colorful country. We all benefit from different cultures, influences and the diversity of people.

With the “Colors of Our Lives” campaign, we want to give people the opportunity to demonstrate that they believe in a colorful, pluralistic society. The proceeds of the campaign go 100 % to the integration projects of GoVolunteer, which are just as colorful and diverse as our country.

EVERY CONTRIBUTION COUNTS: The German Integration Award selects the projects with most supporters - independently of the donation amount. Make a donation now and help us win the prize - for a colorful and diverse society!

The target group for our "Colors of Our Lives" campaign is the entire society. With our skin-colored pencils, we want to create awareness for the unique strengths of our diverse society across all parts of the population. In addition, we would like to motivate you to actively shape your own environment, for example, through the education of your children or while being part of a voluntary engagement for an integration project.

Through the large-scale distribution of our skin-colored pencils to children we want to create impact on three levels:

1. Bring joy to thousands of kids of all colors in Germany (with a particular focus on disadvantaged families and schools in socially weak situations),
2. contribute to a multicultural, diverse and joyful education,
3. generate attention for diversity as a societal opportunity through parents and schools.

But our vision is even greater: GoVolunteer strives for an active society. We want to give every person the opportunity to shape their diverse and colorful community through personal commitment.

We make volunteering a natural part of everyday life. Today, our community already has over 50,000 members. And we want to motivate many more people to join in. We firmly believe that major societal challenges should not be left to policymakers, but can only be solved jointly with everyone in our society.

Integration is the best example. Good laws are just a first step. More is needed: our colorful society can only grow together when everyone is involved and newcomers and locals are able to connect. The volunteer projects of GoVolunteer give people the opportunity to meet at eye-level in a meaningful context. Activities are mainly focused on the field of integration work with refugees: they are concerned with topics such as job searching, training, language acquisition, or social participation in sports and leisure activities. (All our projects can be found on www.GoVolunteer.com.)

For us, refugees are not just a (passive) ‘target group’. Through our program "Engaging Newcomers", we are opening up their own path to involvement. The volunteer projects offer valuable opportunities to get to know German working life, to learn the language, and to establish personal relationships. This makes it much easier to arrive, settle and find work.

Already today, almost one third of the volunteers active through GoVolunteer have a migration background, including many refugees. And over the next 12 months, we want to involve another 10,000 newcomers within our volunteering projects.

If you are interested in diversity and social commitment, you are in the right place! By supporting our campaign you identify with an open and colorful Germany. We believe that we can shape society, the way people think and act, through small steps, often with strong symbolic power - like our pencils.

With your support we can achieve three goals:

1. Spread our skin-colored pencils and the message of diversity and integration throughout Germany and Europe.

2. Support the more than 1,500 integration projects of GoVolunteer and enable each and every individual to actively shape our colorful society.

3. Help 10,000 refugees to become volunteers in the next year alone and give them a good start into society and the labor market.

You can find more detailed information on GoVolunteer, our integration projects, and our concrete plans for 2017 in the next two sections.

Production, shipping, and marketing for the skin color products does not come for free: we must invest in order to truly reach many people and spread our message. Your donation will help us build a social business model, which will form an important pillar in the financing of GoVolunteer's future work for a colorful and diverse society.

As the name suggests, social business is not just about creating business. We do what we do because we have a mission: We want to highlight the opportunities of diversity and motivate as many people as possible in shaping our society through their personal commitment. GoVolunteer, the nationwide community of volunteers, makes this possible because it makes volunteering easy!

In 2017, we want to focus on supporting projects on the integration of refugees into the job market. We do this together with our many partners through a great job coaching program that includes job fairs, mentoring programs, starter workshops, interview training, CV coaching, speed networking and much more.

But we want to take it further: over the next 12 months, we want to provide more than 10,000 newcomers with the opportunity to work on a volunteering project. Why? Because already almost a third of our volunteers themselves have a migration background. We now want to make it possible for many more refugees to become active volunteers themselves. This creates important networks and makes the introduction into society and the labor market considerably easier.