Press conference: Visiting the Werkhof

With its project “Echo helps!” Echo Media has been supporting social projects in the area since 2005: every year it carries out an ambitious donation drive, which is followed up by extensive reporting. Reader donations and media coverage provide needed assistance for the beneficiary organizations - and also offer moral support and encouragement for project workers, who normally carry out their work quietly and often on a volunteer basis. 

“Echo helps! realizes and strengthens civil engagement,” said Peter Augustin of the Software AG Foundation (SAGST), which participated in the media company project again in 2016. SAGST supported initiatives for children and youth, including the Werkhof Darmstadt and a child protection agency, the Kinderschutzbund Kreisverband Groß-Gerau. SAGST supported these institutions with 10,000 euros each.

Each of these non-profit projects will use the money in a different way, but both “really put people front and center,” Augustin noted. The Werkhof Darmstadt will use the money to open a new training center to provide qualifications to disadvantaged youth, while the child protection organization wants to open a cafe in its counseling center for youth who have lost a loved one.

“This is an incredibly important service,” Peter Augustin said in a press conference, as the project “will reach a clientele that has no large lobby and that cannot loudly vocalize to call attention to itself or its needs.”