ABOUT
UNITING MINDS TO FOSTER SUSTAINABLE GROWTH
Timeline of our History
2015: The First Design Thinking Challenge
• Inspired by a 2015 meeting with Prof. Rodney Reed, Michael Huebl developed a training program to reduce the high failure rate of Kenyan businesses
• Inspired by the power of Design Thinking, Michael and other experts created the Design Thinking Challenge for young people to tackle global community challenges
• A team of 20 entrepreneurs and innovation experts launched Impact Week, successfully developing business ideas with local students and teachers in Kenya
2016: The First Train-the-Coach
- After the first successful workshop, the question arose: "How can we ensure sustainability—both financially and in terms of impact?"
- The first Train-the-Coach workshop was conducted at Africa Nazarene University prior to the Impact Week Challenge.
2017: Spreading Internationally
• In 2017, we began scaling Impact Week, inspired by challenges in various countries.
• Volunteers organized events in Nigeria, Rwanda, Colombia, and Jordan.
• Our Kenyan partners independently organized their own Impact Week, demonstrating the sustainability of our efforts.
• Within the year, we empowered the local community to grow independently.
2018: Expanding Impact Beyond Borders
- In 2018, our Kenyan community independently organized three more events in Nairobi and Kibera. They impressively expanded across borders to collaborate with friends in Uganda.
- The Impact Weeks in Delhi and Guwahati marked our first time in India.
2019: Two More Pins on the Map
• Two more countries joined the journey: Nepal and Jordan – bringing Impact Week to the Himalayas and the Middle East.
2020: Virtual Impact Weeks
• During the pandemic, volunteers created virtual challenges due to reduced international travel and gatherings.
• They developed a 2.5-day program for Design Thinking coaches to guide students virtually.
• The program focused on developing ideas to combat Covid-19 related issues
2022: Post-Pandemic Developments
• Since 2022, Impact Week revamped workshops to enhance idea conversion into social enterprises.
• "Track Mentorship" was introduced, with local organizations supporting student groups in Impact Week Challenges.
•This initiated a global movement, impacting students, youth, NGO Workers, incubators, and teachers worldwide.
2023 Founding of Impact Week gUG
- As of March 2023, Impact Week stands as an independent legal entity
- We start to professionalize the structure of a non-profit limited but remain a volunteer-driven organization
2024: The 50th Impact Week
- The Impact Week Philippines 2024 marked our 50th Impact Week
- With the Impact Week Tanzania, we celebrated the 17th country on the Impact Week world map
2025: help alliance Impact Lab and Community Platform
- The help alliance Impact Lab powered by Impact Week is a further development of the Impact Week concept: the support of social start-ups to improve their business model and scale their operations. development of already excisting ideas with start-ups.
- We introduced our Community Platform to give our community a home and a place to exchange ideas and support globally.
And more to come!
Would you like to know how you can do your part? Click here for more information on how you can become apart of Impact Week!
Our Team
Impact Week and its community are growing rapidly.
Aside from Carolin Taenzer and Andrea Quintero, all people contributing and working on the constant improvement of the Impact Week operations are volunteers.
Carolin Taenzer
Managing Director
Carolin came into contact with the concept of Impact Week when she was trained as a Design Thinking Coach during the Impact Week Delhi 2019 and later volunteered during many virtual challenges during the pandemic. After Covid she supported the founding of Impact Week gUG as an independent non-profit. The Managing Director has a degree in International Business Studies with a focus on innovation and sustainability management. She has also already supported several social projects in the Global South.
Andrea Quintero
Marketing & Communication Manager (part-time)
With over six years of experience, Andrea is a dedicated audiovisual storyteller focused on creating impactful content. Holding a Master’s in Production of Audiovisual Formats and a background in journalism, she has produced award-nominated documentaries and award-winning digital narratives for media channels, global brands and NGOs. Her work has helped grow audience and also contributed to transformational projects in both commercial and social sectors. If you’ve enjoyed the visual experience from Impact Week and would like to explore storytelling collaborations for your brand, project or event, feel free to get in touch.
Jens Unger
Supporting Managing Director
Jens is a Senior Manager at the Lufthansa Group in the area of Cultural Transformation and has a passion for entrepreneurship, in which he also holds a doctorate. He also has 10 years of experience as a freelance coach and has held management positions at the Lufthansa Group for 13 years. He got involved in Impact Week in 2016, and helped to get international companies involved in order to achieve the financial sustainability of the projects.
Do you have questions or want to get involved?
Our Partners
Our Values
Respect
Innovation
Empowerment
Community & Cooperation
Transparency
Information about Impact Week in accordance with the voluntary commitment of the Transparent Civil Society Initiative
Impact Week gUG (haftungsbeschränkt) is commited to transparency. Therefore, you can find all information in accordance with the “Initiative Transparente Zivilgesellschaft” on this page. Contact us if you have further questions.
1. Name, Address, and Contact
- Impact Week gUG (haftungsbeschränkt)
- Pappelallee 78/79, 10437 Berlin
- Contact: Carolin Tänzer, info@impactweek.net
- Founding year: 2023, the initiative started 2015 under the umbrella of Kirche in Aktion e.V.
2. Complete statutes and information about the goals of our organization
- Statutes (only available in German)
3. Information on tax relief
- Freistellungsbescheid des Finanzamt für Körperschaften I, Berlin (St.-Nr.: 27/614/05434) vom 28.08.2023
4. Name and function of key decision makers
- Carolin Tänzer, operating Managing Director, co-founder
- Dr. Jens Unger, co-founder (in an honorary capacity), supporting Managing Director
- Michael Hübl, co-founder (in an honorary capacity)
5. Activity report
- Our most recent activity can be found on our “Upcoming & Past Projects” page. There we also have the yearly reports. Please understand that we are a small team and it takes some time to publish this report.
6. Personnel structure
- Kindly visit the section “Our Team” under the header “About us” on this website. For the volunteers engaged on each project kindly check the individual project page.
7. Information on the source of funds
- Our funds mainly stem from participant fees of our corporate participants. However, we also have some donations as a source of income. The detailed figures can be found in the “financials” section of our reports. The reports are linked in “Upcoming & Past Projects”.
8. Information on the use of funds
- Impact Week gUG is a purpose-driven enterprise. We do not pay dividends to our shareholders and cannot be bought. Instead, 100% of our income is used to enhance our impact. Our funds are used to cover project costs such as transport and accommodation for our volunteers, food for our participants, materials and also to finance our overhead. For a detailed overview check out our report under “financials”
9. Affiliation with third parties under company law
- Impact Week gUG is an independent organization and is not affiliated with any third party under company law.
10. Names of persons whose annual payments account for more than 10% of the annual budget
- We don’t have people whose annual payments constantly influence our budget for more than 10%. This varies from year to year. Kindly check our report.