End-of-year review Start Somewhere e.V. (Englisch)
Dear friends of Start Somewhere,
2016 has shown that we can achieve great things together! With your support, we provided
400 school children in the Kibera Slum with two meals per day. The food is a key factor for the continuous high attendance rate of the students. The online donation campaigns were very successful. Thanks to the tremendous support, all monthly costs for the daily meals are covered until the end of this year. This way we can now fully concentrate on the financing and implementation of our school building project in Kibera. In the following, we would like to give
you an overview of our activities in the past year. Thank you so much for your support!
December 2015
On December 3rd, family and friends of Oliver meet in Munich to found a non-profit organisation. After knowing each other for more than 10 years Oliver’s initiative inspired us all to come together to found „Start Somewhere“. The official notice arrived two days before Christmas. Perfect timing and a good start for 2016!
The founding members of Start Somewhere: 
Sebastian Stawowski, Jakob Weil, Kristina Cress, Silvia Hesse, Oliver von Malm, Dagny von Malm, Iris von Malm (left to right)
January 2016
Shortly afterwards, Oliver visits the schools in Nairobi. Through a spontaneous donation campaign on our facebook page we could finance and install 24 new mattresses for our „baby class“. 
And together with the slum residents we could set up a temporary roof structure for a new class room. 
February – May 2016
On his last day in Nairobi, Oliver meets Fidence Awour, a 13-year old student of one of our schools. Due to a very painful tumor below the eye, Fidence is not able to attend classes anymore. After his return, Oliver immediately arranges a computer tomography in Nairobi. This process, mainly the communication with the hospital in Nairobi, is very complicated. Judy Oloo, head of one of the schools, is an invaluable support on site. She spends long days and nights in the hospital and takes care of everything. 
Since several doctors attested good healing chances, we decided to cover the costs of the surgical removal of the tumor. Thankfully, the surgery and post-treatments went well and Fidence is even able to go to school again. Oliver just met Fidence in Nairobi recently and could convince himself that she is doing well. Wonderful news! 
Juni 2016
Oliver hands in his master thesis „Construction in a slum area“ at the University of Innsbruck. Due to growing student numbers, heat and hygienic problems, the slum residents asked Oliver to build a new school. This request was the starting point for his master thesis. 
But the approach goes much further than planing and building one school within the slum. It is about developing a new system to enable residents to plan and build houses on their own. The combination of high tech planning tools and low tech production methods allows state of the art and functional architecture that is not more expensive than the conventional construction made from mud, wood and plaster. The project of Start Somewhere won´t just built a house. Our vision is a system by which the slum residents are able to improve their life with their own abilities. For this idea, Oliver received the Dean´s award of the university of Innsbruck for his masters thesis.
Juli 2016
Finally, Start Somewhere is officially registered as organization with the Amtsgericht Munich. In the meanwhile, we produced a video to promote our cause and raise funds:
Many thanks for the support of Maximilian Cress, Fenomenal Film.
August 2016
Two online donation campaigns are launched on betterplace, the biggest german donation plattform. One campaign for the continued support for two schools in Kibera which are run by our partner organisation Global One Foundation. Start Somewhere covers the monthly costs of 660 Euro for the daily meals of 400 students. Each day, the schoolchildren receive two simple but nutritious meals like porridge for breakfast and rice with beans for lunch. 
The second campaign promotes our school building project. Since August our goal is to raise funds for the first milestone: the development of a functioning process to produce prefabricated, material-saving building elements.
September 2016
Relaunch of our website http://www.startsomewhere.eu in German and English.
Oktober 2016
Development work for the school building project is well under way. Oliver uses the „Spielraum FabLab“ in Innsbruck for this. The FabLab is an open, high tech laboratory that gives individuals access to professional prototyping equipment, such as 3D-printers, laser cutters, CNC mills and vinyl cutters. This is the ideal environment to develop flexible screed casings for the building components. 
The school building project is now devided into 3 phases:
Phase 1: Development of a functioning process to produce prefabricated, material-saving building components.
Phase 2: Construction of a manufacturing facility in Kibera
Phase 3: Construction of the school
November 2016
Our first fundraiser in Munich „drink&donate“ is a complete success. The church generously provided us with the location. Moreover, we are invited to present Start Somewhere on Sunday at the church café. Beside an interesting discussion about our school project great ideas for collaborative activities in 2017 come up. 
Many thanks to Sigfried Thuringer and Anneliese Harrer for making this possible!
Oliver takes part at a startuplive event in Innsbruck: A two-day workshop to further develop innovative business ideas . After the presentation of Start Somewhere´s concept for the school, the experienced Jury awarded Oliver and his team the „Community Winner“ price. 
Dezember 2016
The business magazine eco.nova issues an article about Start Somewhere and the school project: http://www.startsomewhere.eu/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Eco-Nova.pdf
Dear friends, we are looking forward to another year of Start Somewhere with you! We will keep you up to date on our activities via Facebook and our homepage. Many thanks for your support! 
Oliver, Kristina, Sebastian, Jakob, Silvia, Dagny and Iris with the children and teacher from Kibera!
http://www.startsomewhere.eu
https://www.facebook.com/let.us.start.somewhere/
info@startsomewhere.eu