Bring the Doughnut to Berlin!

Summary

A couple of Doughnut enthusiasts decided they want to start a Doughnut initiative in Berlin and took the opportunity to have a first exchange about such a project with Jennifer Johanna Drouin from the Amsterdam Doughnut Coalition. On 30 september we gathered actors from NGOS, academia, social entrepreneurship and politics for a first workshop. The results can be found in our Donut4Berlin group on wechange.de. You can also connect via LinkedIn in our Donut4Berlin group. Please connect to learn more about our next steps.

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On 30 September, the Donut4Berlin initiative had the opportunity to meet with Jennifer Johanna Drouin from the Amsterdam Donut Coalitie. She was invited to the WECHANGE conference “Dialogues for the Future” in Berlin. WECHANGE as one of the founding partners of the initiative offered to host our workshop at the conference venue, the bUm. 30 people involved in NGOS, academia, social entrepreneurship and politics followed the invitation.

Patrick Léon Gross and Nicole Hartmann provided an introduction and first insights into the social, environmental and political situation in Berlin and explored the potential of the Doughnut model for the city. After a short introduction of our guest by Kate Goodwin, Jennifer Johanna Drouin inspired her audience with an energetic presentation about the Amsterdam Donut journey. She drew attention to which actors have to be identified as important change agents, what challenges are to be expected, how diverse perspectives can be integrated and how a strong community can be built.

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After this first part, we invited the participants to contribute their own ideas on two questions: What do we need to bring the Doughnut to Berlin? With what concrete ideas, actions, measures and projects can we start? The ideas were collected on post-its, gathered and clustered on whiteboards while everyone started to discuss with each other. We then asked who would like to take responsibility for one of the identified tasks. Ludwig Schuster and Nicole Hartmann committed to build a digital infrastructure for further collaboration and networking. Patrick Léon Gross offered to take responsibility for the planning of the next event. The workshop was closed with sweet rewards from Brammibal’s vegan Donuts for everyone and a group photo documenting the first get-together. 

Important results

We transferred the many great ideas from the workshop onto a miro board, thematically clustered and summarized in a presentation. We made all results as well as photos, slides and more documents available in a group at the collaboration platform WECHANGE under the name Donut4Berlin. Here we have digital infrastructure for networking and building teams to start tangible projects. To be visible and reachable for more people interested in bringing the Doughnut to Berlin we also created a Donut4Berlin group on LinkedIn.

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Important findings

There are many different potential avenues for how to proceed and which strategy might be successful. Open questions are: What structures do we need to create for activating effectively the Doughnut model for Berlin? Who needs to be enabled or empowered to build the community? How must the community be built and cared for to thrive? Is a central board necessary to navigate the Berlin Donut journey? Which culture of decision making do we want to establish? The Donut4Berlin needs to emerge collaboratively according to the principles of the Doughnut Economics Action Lab. Despite strong enthusiasm for the initiative, concrete commitment to be responsible for certain tasks wasn’t high yet, hence we need more meetings to build trust in working for the common goal.

Next steps

We organise networking on LinkedIn and collaboration on WECHANGE. On 28 october we will have our second meeting to start building teams and work on certain tasks like organisation, strategy, research and analysis, building political alliances, communication & storyline and corporate identity. We have a strong vision of Berlin as a regenerative city enabling the good life for all within the planetary boundaries. On the journey towards realizing it, we intend to start with small steps in building a strong and committed community and network, building reliable political relationships and presenting first use cases where the principles of the Doughnut are effective.

Let's dance and roll the Donut!