Founders' meeting in Wiesbaden
25 years Terre des Hommes Community Foundation
Every year, the Terre des Hommes Community Foundation invites all its donors to its annual meeting – an excellent opportunity to learn more about the projects it supports and to exchange ideas with like-minded individuals. This year, the meeting took place in beautiful Wiesbaden on the first weekend of June.
Traditionally, a small program of events takes place the day before the actual meeting. This includes a visit to a Terre des Hommes project. This year, the group visited the Steingarten daycare center in Wiesbaden. The daycare center is run by the long-standing partner organization XENIA – interkulturelle Projekte gGmbH, whose main shareholder is Terre des Hommes . Managing Director Dagmar Hansen and her colleagues gave the visitors a tour of the premises and then provided insights into the daily project work over coffee and cake. Due to the high number of families with a migration background in the daycare center's catchment area, a variety of programs are offered for children and their parents in the areas of language, socio-cultural interaction, and assistance with bureaucratic matters.
Afterwards, the group visited the nearby Eberbach Monastery, where the film "The Name of the Rose" was filmed. The participants were given a guided tour of the ancient buildings, and the day concluded with a shared dinner in the monastery restaurant.
"The confidence and courage of our Ukrainian partner organizations has deeply impressed me."
The following day, the actual donors' meeting took place, where participants were treated to a report on Terre des Hommes aid projects in Ukraine. Joshua Hofert, Head of Communications for the association and the Terre des Hommes Community Foundation, shared his recent impressions from his trip to Ukraine the previous week with the donors. He described his experiences as follows: "The confidence and courage of our Ukrainian partner organizations deeply impressed me. They are evacuating children and families from front-line areas, providing them with essential supplies, offering trauma therapy, and rebuilding schools and youth centers. In Chernihiv, I visited one of our projects where an art therapist was working with traumatized children. Despite its proximity to the Belarusian border, the children's center is a largely safe haven, free from fear, sirens, and air raid sirens. At the end, a six-year-old girl asked the psychologist: 'Is it really true that you are only concerned with helping children like us, not with making money?'" You are such good people... Experiences like these give us at Terre des Hommes the strength to continue working to strengthen children and their rights in Ukraine and 44 other countries – despite all the wars and crises around the world
The agenda also included reports on the foundation's finances and the activities of the board of trustees. The meeting concluded with a toast to the community foundation's 25th anniversary.
Are you already a donor to the Terre des Hommes Community Foundation? We would be delighted to welcome you to the next donors' meeting! Or are you interested in the opportunities offered by the Terre des Hommes Community Foundation? Please contact us:
Simon Forman, Foundation and Legacy Officer, Tel.: +49 541 / 71 01-200, s.forman@tdh.de