It was cold
and it started raining a bit. I put on my big-thumb white glove. After a few
minutes a big car with a nice American driver stopped. He was going to
Luxembourg. That was October 2013. Nine months of hitchhiking, meeting
sustainable entrepreneurs, experiencing kindness and learning by doing. I’m
keeping the best for last. Sunday 3 August I’m hitchhiking to Darmstadt
(Germany) for theJourney – the last
journey of my Green Sense Tour.
TheJourney
is a five-week summer school on climate change and entrepreneurship organized
by Climate-KIC. For five weeks I’ll live and learn together with an
international crowd of young people passionate about climate change. The goal:
get to know environmental problems more in-depth and find solutions through
entrepreneurship.
We aren’t
staying at one place! TheJourney takes
place in 3 countries. The programme: Darmstadt (Germany, 1 week), Kassel
(Germany, 1week), Zürich (Switzerland, 2 weeks) and Wageningen (the
Netherlands, 1 week). TheJourney is fully funded by the organization. My tight
travelling budget is very grateful for that fact.
Even though
it already has been a heavy and exciting year, I’m really looking forward to
these five weeks. On the one hand I believe I will meet and work with amazing
people. As I experience each time when I meet people of MakeSense and talk with
them about social entrepreneurship, having a shared passion creates mutual
understanding and results in friendships.
On the
other hand, I hope to develop the idea I want to pursue for the coming months
and years. I want to start a network for Food Waste Entrepreneurs – read more
about it in my previous
post here. This network will facilitate collaboration and exchange
between those entrepreneurs and support them to develop faster. The mission:
reducing food waste one venture at a time. TheJourney comes at exactly the
right moment. It will give me the tools, input and inspiration to develop the
idea, sharpen its value and make it ready to start.
