9 May 2022

TUI Foundation: Young ideas for Europe

Winning ideas of TUI Foundation's #RestartEurope competition launch on Europe Day – Upload now your sound reminding you of home

9 May is Europe Day! The TUI Foundation (based and operating mostly in Germany) has set itself the goal of strengthening the idea of Europe among young people with its projects. For example, the #RestartEurope competition started at the end of 2021. During the Corona pandemic and due to the associated travel restrictions, cross-border exchange was no longer easily possible, especially for young people. With #RestartEurope, the TUI Foundation in cooperation with the Berlin think tank iRights.Lab gave young people the opportunity to "restart" their Europe and develop and implement their own ideas for digital, cross-border togetherness. The competition was looking for project ideas from young people between 16 and 26 to bring Europeans together digitally.

After their pitch in front of a top-class jury and after intensive weeks of preparation and a lot of voluntary commitment by the young people, the project websites of the three winning ideas are live just in time for today's Europe Day!

"SOUNDS OF EUROPE" – What does home sound like? Upload your own homeland sound now

The Sounds of Europe project is now collecting sounds that Europeans associate with their homeland on its website www.sounds-of.eu. A unique map of European sounds is being created. In the end, a song will be created from all the sounds – a somewhat different European anthem. The mastermind behind the idea for Sounds of Europe is Jonas Wintersteiger. As a trained sound engineer, he is very familiar with sounds and noises and knows that the sound makes the music. "Music and sounds offer the possibility to overcome language barriers in a unique way. It is precisely these qualities that I would like to harness to create an exchange between young Europeans," says Jonas Wintersteiger.

"focusEU – Exchange between Poland and Germany" – What topics are young Germans and Poles concerned about?

As part of the team of an online magazine that presents European policy issues for young people, Moritz Hergl, Denise Klein and Friederike Graupner deal intensively with European policy issues. This is precisely why they know how important a close journalistic look is in order to do justice to topics. The aim of the project focusEU – Exchange between Poland and Germany is to network journalistically active people from Germany and Poland and to publish various media contributions and content in the social media in Polish, German and English in order to contribute to strengthening the European media space.

"AVIA – Europe, a family matter" What do grandmothers and their granddaughters think about Europe's history and future?

As a native of Strasbourg with her adopted home in Berlin and currently living and working in Brussels, Magali Hübers knows that Europe is above all a privilege. Personal conversations with her grandmother have made it all the more clear to her that it was not always so. "I always talked a lot with my grandmothers and especially with my French grandmother. In doing so, I always wanted to understand what her life was like as a committed woman in the 70s." At AVIA – Europe, a family matter, it is precisely this generational exchange between granddaughters and their grandmothers on Europe's past and future that is the focus. Magali Hübers will regularly publish new interviews; for the launch of the website www.aviageneration.eu she documented conversations she had with grandmothers and their grandchildren in France, Spain and Italy. (Website available in German only)

"As a foundation, we want to strengthen the idea of Europe among young people. Why shouldn't we then ask them directly how they would approach this task? The three projects that have now been implemented have very different approaches to the topic of Europe. With a lot of personal commitment, the winners here have realised ideas that are based on digital technologies and are emotional and relevant at the same time. This is the best prerequisite for reaching as many people as possible," says Elke Hlawatschek, Managing Director of the TUI Foundation.

The three winning ideas were among 13 teams invited to a three-day workshop weekend. At the end of the workshops, the participants presented their project ideas to an eight-member jury, which selected three winning projects. These were each supported by the TUI Foundation with 5,000 euros to implement their ideas. In addition to the financial support, there was also non-material support during the implementation phase. The participants were continuously guided in the implementation of their projects and were able to develop their skills in areas such as project management or social media marketing.