ONE DAY e.V. was established in 2014 with the aim of being able to support or develop aid projects within a formal framework. The primary aim of the association is to help people, especially children, to develop healthily and thus be able to determine their own futures.
We want to advocate and strengthen children’s rights. All of our projects share the same objective: to achieve change that lasts. We strive to help people to help themselves – with no turning a blind eye and no giving up. Our association also values communication as equals. Our work is aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations, for example the projects and initiatives that are implemented by our local partners and funded and supported by us. With this approach, we ensure that everyone has their own role to play.
This question is best answered by Saskia Schmidt, the Chair and initiator of ONE Day e.V.:
When performing her piece “One Day” at a poetry slam, Julia Engelmann once said: “Let’s write stories that we’ll want to tell later down the line” – and that’s precisely what I wanted to do. And one day, maybe somebody will do something that will change the world. I want to try to give people wings, to help them to help themselves. This is why our logo features a bird.
ONE DAY finances the majority of its projects with donations from companies and private individuals, as well as proceeds from fundraising events. Sales of our charity items additionally provide a significant amount of income to fund our work. What’s more, support received from foundations and crowdfunding campaigns also makes up part of our overall budget.
Visits to our projects are necessary in order to determine whether our projects and budgets are being implemented as discussed. (New) projects need to be set up and monitored. We carry out our projects in cooperation with a large team from a local NGO in Sierra Leone. Our work with the on-site team is improved by a personal exchange of ideas and experiences, which enables us to develop mutual trust and understanding and identify and discuss different perspectives. When we visit our projects, especially with several people accompanying us on our mission, our visitors pay for their flights and accommodation themselves. We only cover some of the travel costs for just one or two members of the association, namely those who have frequently travelled to our project locations to complete concrete tasks such as monitoring accounting transactions in the past and did so in their free time and at their own expense.
We constantly strive to build sustainable structures within our organisation. This includes establishing a core team of helpers who are committed to mastering the operational challenges involved in our work as an association on a long-term basis.
Heroes who are interested in helping us on a regular basis (+/- 3 hours a week) or just every now and again are welcome to contact us at any time.
To take the first step towards becoming part of our team, you can join our “WhatsApp Volunteer Chat” by clicking on the link in the footer. In this group, we often post tasks and activities that our core team is currently unable to cover.
Volunteers who are interested in joining our team on a longer-term basis are usually invited to one of our team meetings so that we can see how their schedules and talents fit with our to-do list. It sometimes takes a while to determine how they can best help, but we are, of course, always grateful for the extra hands and support.
The bracelets are made by ONE DAY team members, who produce them voluntarily.
Some bracelets are now also made by our project participants in our project locations, although these are sold in the country in which they are produced.
The girls in our shelters like making the bracelets, and doing so almost forms part of their ‘therapy’. What’s more, the bracelets made allow our NGO to generate its own small proceeds.
One Day e.V.
Account number: 101444905
IBAN: DE37795625140101444905
Sort code: 795 625 14
BIC: GENODEF1AB1
Raiffeisenbank Aschaffenburg eG
Recipient: One Day e.V.
If you have donated up to EUR 300, your cash payment receipt or confirmation of your bank/PayPal transfer will be accepted by the tax offices as sufficient evidence for your tax return. For information on tax matters concerning donations in other countries, please consult the respective tax authority. We are happy to provide a donation receipt for tax purposes for donations of more than EUR 300.
Your donation gets to where it is needed!
Donations to ONE DAY are personal, transparent and sustainable.
Transparency
How your donation is used:
If you would like your donation to be put towards a specific project, we are happy to discuss this with you personally.
Donation receipt
To request a donation receipt, please complete and submit the following form:
We are unfortunately unable to accept clothing donations.
This is partly because such donations take a lot of time and effort to organise, not only in terms of transporting donated clothes to our project but also because such donations need to be sorted according to usability, stored and in some cases disposed of. We do not have the time, space or staff to meet these requirements. Furthermore, organising the transportation of clothes to Sierra Leone would also have a huge impact on the carbon footprint that we leave on the world, meaning that something designed to do good would also do harm.
The most important reason why we do not accept clothing donations is that all of our projects aim to help people to help themselves in accordance with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). We place extremely high value on supporting and promoting sustainability, autonomy and independence. We want the people involved in our projects to be able to stand on their own two feet on a long-term basis. This objective is difficult enough in a project like ours, which offers support in exceptional situations and ultimately involves working with children. Even hospitals and women’s shelters in Europe only finance their own activities in extremely rare cases and are instead usually secured by state-run public funding bodies and social systems.
Against this background, we want, or better said, need to ensure that our project locations maintain and hopefully increase their purchasing power and that our activities, which are designed to help, do not have a negative impact. We would therefore rather support the work of a seamstress based in one of our locations than import cheap clothing for our girls, which would be detrimental to the local market. Sierra Leone has a sufficient amount of raw materials, stunning colourful fabrics and many trained seamstresses whom we want to support.
THANK YOU for your kind willingness to donate clothes. The best way to do so is to bring your clothes to a charity shop or sell them yourself and donate the proceeds.
We are happy to provide you with an insight here:
Transparency
If you have any further questions or would like us to explain or discuss any aspects of the report, please feel free to contact us at any time.
#HOPE
Your sponsorship of the HOPE Project supports girls in the darkest of moments. Some of the girls involved in our project are victims of violence and sexual abuse. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, many of these young women have fallen pregnant as a result of the abuse, as well as often being thrown out by their own families, suspended from school education and left alone to deal with life and all of its obstacles with no protection whatsoever.
In cooperation with our heroic local partner association, the NGO “commit and act”, we provide care and support for these victims at our two locations in Makeni and Bo, Sierra Leone (West Africa). With a long-term commitment, we work to pave the way back to a normal life for both young mothers and their children. Our locations offer pregnant girls and, further down the line, their newborns protection, support, care, hope and the chance to have a future.
You can find out more here:
Become a sponsor
#KALIA
In this project, we look after nearly 100 children who were orphaned due to the Ebola epidemic.
All of the children in this project currently have a sponsor.
#KIBERATALENTS
In Kenya, in one of the largest slums in the world, we support talented children and help them gain access to secondary school education.
Most of their parents cannot afford the school fees that this involves. Feel free to contact us to find out more!
That depends on whether you are sponsoring a project or a specific child.
Depending on the project, your sponsored child will live in Sierra Leone or Kenya, Africa.
You will receive personal post from our HOPE Project or from your sponsored child in Kalia or Kenya once a year.
We also send out a newsletter with the latest news from our projects every 3–4 months.
Facebook, Instagram and our newsletter provide regular updates on what’s going on in our project locations.
It would be great if you could write your letter to your sponsored child in English so that we can pass it on to them directly.
If not, our social workers in our project locations can translate your letters for the children.
This is theoretically possible.
That said, a trip to Sierra Leone is anything but easy.
Please contact the health authorities or an institute of tropical medicine for more information before planning your visit.
Visits to the HOPE Project are a particularly sensitive issue because we work with victims of violence and abuse.
We do not want to subject the girls to any more distress and therefore aim to protect the victims to the best possible extent.
Our on-site team, an independent non-profit organisation, represents ONE DAY and handles the operational implementation of our projects. Several social and medical workers look after our project participants, namely children, young mothers, babies and many other people who benefit from the information and support provided by our projects.
In our Kalia Project, we support the concept of “extended families”. The children grow up in local families together with their own children. This helps avoid creating parallel social structures and instead ensures that the children grow up in a family-like setting.
Our HOPE Shelters offer temporary accommodation. At the end of their stay, mothers and their children return to a safe environment where they continue to be supported by our social workers.
This is unfortunately not possible. On the one hand, it wouldn’t be fair to the other children and on the other hand, the infrastructure poses a problem. Many of our sponsored children live in villages that have no electricity and do not receive post.
A regular donation of EUR 30 per month, which equates to 1 euro per day, enables us to meet the children’s basic needs. Every euro more helps us to provide them with even more support. If you would like to increase your monthly donation, we would be happy to hear from you.
We automatically send out an annual donation receipt for tax purposes.
If for some reason, you do not receive your annual receipt, you can request one here:
No, you can end your sponsorship at any time without specifying the reason.
Kalia & Kenya:
Your sponsorship ensures that your sponsored child can grow up in a caring environment and receive medical care. With your help, your sponsored child can also go to school. You therefore give your child access to education, which is an essential factor for the provision of long-term and lasting support.
HOPE:
In the HOPE Project, your sponsorship money covers a place in our HOPE Shelter. You help to pay the wages of the social and medical workers, to cover the cost of medication and C-section surgeries, to cater to the needs of mothers and their babies at the HOPE Shelter and to support them with baby formula where needed. Above all, you provide hope for these young women and their babies.
Feel free to team up with friends, colleagues or family members! If you decide to take on a sponsorship in a group of three, you will only pay EUR 10 each per month.
Please contact Stefan by sending an e-mail to stefan@oneday.de
Every cent of your sponsorship money flows into the project.
The administrative costs in Germany are very low and are mostly covered by sales of our charity items.
You can end your sponsorship at any time and don’t need to feel bad about doing so. We’re sure that we will find a new hero to sponsor your child.
Everyone gives whatever they can, and that is wonderful.
Feel free to contact our team member Svenja.
She looks forward to hearing from you at svenja@oneday.de
With our HOPE Project, we support girls experiencing their darkest moments.
Some of the girls in the project were victims of rape or even suffered from many years of abuse when aged under 18.
And as if that wasn’t bad enough, the girls in our project have fallen pregnant as a result of the abuse, as well as often being thrown out by their own families, suspended from school education and left alone to deal with life and all of its obstacles with no protection whatsoever.
In cooperation with our heroic local partner association, the NGO “commit and act”, we provide care and support for these victims at our two locations in Makeni and Bo, Sierra Leone (West Africa) and accompany them and their babies on their journey bath to a normal life.
You can read a very detailed description of the project in our magazine: ONE DAY Magazine (currently only available in German)
That depends on the situation of the mother. If the mother feels capable of keeping their child and would like to go back to school, our social workers check whether there is anyone within their family (mother, grandmother, aunt, etc.) who could care for the child and provide support.
In 95% of cases, the babies remain with their birth mothers.
Any special cases that have occurred have been able to be covered by the social workers within our team.
The mothers and their babies spend the first four weeks after the birth at the HOPE Shelter. The babies receive medical care and vaccinations and are given a starter pack containing clothing, a blanket, a comb and similar items. Over this period, the young mothers can attend workshops such as the “Good Parenting Skills” workshop, which prepare them for their situation and their lives with a child.
HOPE Shelters are a protective environment and a safe haven in which our employees look after young mothers and their babies.
Our projects are all fundamentally based on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations.
You can read more about them here: SDG Agenda 2030
Our primary focus is on children’s rights that are being completely violated – we want to advocate and strengthen these rights.
Providing babies with a safe home and sufficient food, clothing, and medical care is absolutely essential.
We also want to support the education/training of young mothers with unplanned pregnancies and help them overcome their trauma by facing it and tackling it in therapy sessions.
Another objective is to ensure that sexual offenders behind such traumas are caught and punished in order to achieve change on a long-term basis.
Our vision for the best-case scenario is to use education, elucidation and workshops to have a preventative impact and avoid violence altogether.