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How Nyendo works
Idea & Vision
Experience – shape – change – learn
We support young social entrepreneurs in their desire to help shape our world in a fair and sustainable way. They become entrepreneurially active, give their proceeds to friends in the slums of Nairobi and visit them after two years of involvement.
Bill Drayton
“Social entrepreneurs are the essential corrective force. They are system-changing entrepreneurs. And from deep within they … are committed to the good of all.”
Founder and Chair of Ashoka
A Nyendo student
“For me, Nyendo is a framework in which I learn in a self-determined way, get help when I need it and make a difference in the world.”
Quote from a Nyendo student
A new approach to education
Changing learning – changing and learning
Based on scientific findings, experts on learning and creativity such as Gerald Hüther and Sir Ken Robinson are calling for a “revolution” in education. Hüther wants to invite, inspire and encourage students ‒ because learning only takes place when it is also felt and experienced. The economist Jeremy Rifkin sees social entrepreneurs as the heroes of the new age, who work together creatively and with a focus on solutions to create new markets.
They all speak of shared learning spaces with real challenges in which individual potential can develop to the full. Nyendo is a successful and scalable example of this new approach to education.
Gerald Hüther
“Young people need tasks, role models and communities.”
Neurobiologist
The educational concept
Creating a culture of encounter
We support young people in their desire to help shape our world in a fair and sustainable way, and we create a culture of encounter. Nyendo combines entrepreneurial know-how with real-life challenges.
Our impulse: to offer young people a framework for learning and action that enables them to follow their hearts and develop their potential as co-creators of a globalised society.
Nyendo combines
- teaching economic skills
- diverse cooperation in real networks
- a global development partnership with people in the slum
- self-determined, self-efficacious and reflective learning in a team
Social Entrepreneurship
Learning in real student companies
Our students go through a social entrepreneurship programme and work in real student companies – coached by experienced mentors.
Students at Nyendo schools set up independent companies or take part in individual projects. Income is generated, for example, through self-made products such as teas or cosmetics, or through direct trade, for instance in coffee or African handicrafts. 100% of the company proceeds go to the slum communities.
Nyendo helps to set up and support regional networks of Nyendo schools and their partner schools in the slum, and supports the slum communities in developing their potential.
On the road together
Rules of the game for our Nyendo schools
everyone contributes voluntarily and reliably
we work together in teams across year groups and in the Nyendo school network
we implement sustainable business ideas and aim to make a profit every year
we want to give our proceeds to our partner school as help for self-help
we want to visit our friends in the slum, share their lives and learn from them
we see ourselves as an interactive part of a global civil society
we reflect on and document our actions in a personal Nyendo portfolio
The annual cycle
Three events set the rhythm of the year
Our year is structured by three events which, with their special quality of experience, are always a source of inspiration and strength for our joint work:
- Winter: a retreat for all Nyendo students and team members
- Spring/summer: private project trips by individual student groups to Kenya
- Autumn: the visit from Kenya to the German Nyendo schools
Irmgard Wutte
“We want to overcome the divisions in our globalised society through personal encounters, by working out and implementing solutions together.”
Managing Director and founder of nyendo.lernen
History
How a student company became a movement
“nyendo” is Swahili and means: movement
In July 2012 I founded nyendo.lernen hand in hand UG, having already set up the pilot Nyendo student company in Ismaning from 2004 to 2007 and worked on the concept of an elective project subject in social entrepreneurship. Since 2004, this first student company has traded in fair-trade handicrafts and has since been able to give around €100,000 to its partner school in Kenya. A total of eleven year groups have visited the school since then.
Encouraged by this success and inspired by the lively debate on education in our country, I invited other schools to join in. With currently six Nyendo schools, we as the Nyendo team and network are making a “moving” contribution to our changing global society.
Irmgard Wutte, Managing Director and founder
Prof. Gerald Hüther
“We don’t have a knowledge deficit, we have an implementation deficit!”
in a talk show on education
nyendo.lernen is a concrete NEW educational offer with a big impact!
Michael Ende
“The culture of the 21st century will and must be a global culture.”
in an interview in the 1990s
Our Nyendo young people are actively developing a NEW, global culture.
We are moved by our young people’s interest in the world and their heartfelt desire to stand up for a peaceful and just world, and impressed by the motivation and competence of our friends in the slums of Nairobi.
We invite both target groups to a lively cooperation as partners; we inspire and encourage them and thereby release enormous potential.