Innovation needs space - and we celebrate projects that create it

At TeleskopEffekt, innovation is our core competence - and what's more, it is also a project close to our hearts. Since our foundation, we have been committed to creating new perspectives, putting bold ideas into practice and developing individual strategies that shape the future. We are particularly pleased when other major players share this attitude. One of these players is Union Investment - one of our gold partners.

With its charity initiative “We for tomorrow“ Union Investment impressively demonstrates how social innovation and commitment can be promoted and made visible.

What is “We for tomorrow“?

With the initiative become Each year, groundbreaking projects in the three categories Social affairs, education and the environment fromdrawn. In total, around 400,000 € funding in creative and committed ideas and projects from non-profit organizations. ”We for tomorrow” thus shows how diverse innovation can be - and how effective it can be if it ends up in the right hands. 

„Everyone here today is a winner. Their work is a shining example of how each of us can change the world.“  

- Hans Joachim Reinke, Chairman of the Management Board of Union Investment 

The jury: expertise from different perspectives

Before this year's award ceremony on October 27, the submitted projects will be carefully inspected and evaluated. Decisive for the selection are independent jury of experts and a youth jury, moderated by the patron Reinke. The prominent expert jury is made up of:

• Hans Joachim Reinke - Chairman of the Management Board of Union Investment (Patron)
• Neven Subotic - Former professional soccer player and foundation founder (Social category)
• Natalya Nepomnyashcha - Social entrepreneur and activist for educational justice (Education category)
• Hannes Jaenicke - Actor and environmental activist (Environment category)

The additional Youth jury brings a completely different perspective to the selection process. This highly opinionated jury full of expertise will meet together at the end of September this year and publishes a longlist, from which three winners with lighthouse character are ultimately selected. 

Why this particularly impresses us

It is precisely this attitude - thinking broadly about innovation and promoting it in different contexts - that connects us with Union Investment. Our partnership is based on the common goal of actively shaping the future. At TeleskopEffekt, we are delighted when innovation is not just a buzzword, but actually becomes a reality. social impact. The „We for tomorrow“ initiative therefore fascinates us in two ways:

• It shows that Progress is possible, when you just get on with it and boldly move forward. When people work together and are given the opportunity to develop their ideas.
• Innovation does not always just mean digitalization or state-of-the-art technology Rethinking processes and Bringing the everyday together, where there was otherwise no connection: that too is innovation.

Innovation needs both: Rooms, in which new ideas can emerge - and Structures, that enable these ideas to grow in a targeted manner. ‚We for tomorrow‘ impressively demonstrates how important it is to open up precisely this space for courageous projects and make their impact visible. We see our task in a very similar way: we create the conditions in companies so that approaches become real innovations - whether through technology, process optimization or a future-oriented mindset. Because we are convinced: Real innovative strength only arises when technology, people and structures are considered together. 

Together with Union Investment, we are pursuing the goal of making innovation visible in all its forms - in both a social and entrepreneurial context. We are therefore particularly excited to see which projects will be honored this year and what impetus they will generate.