Purification plant wins sustainability award

The founders have either experienced discrimination themselves or in their environment. Their platform aims to make society freer from prejudice and discrimination.

The Karlsruhe start-up Aufklärwerk has won the sustainability award of the "Grow Start-up Competition". This is aimed at start-ups in the Karlsruhe region and comes with prize money of 6,000 euros.

Aufklärwerk aims to free society from prejudice and discrimination. The start-up offers a central platform for social organizations. It is used to provide social education and meeting opportunities, including lectures, workshops and guided tours, for example. The platform is initially focusing on schools and other educational institutions. According to the founders, the reason for this is that children and young people are a particularly sensitive target group who need to be educated preventively in order to create a lasting reduction in prejudice and discrimination.

"We are both passionate about the idea, as we have both experienced discrimination or prejudice several times either directly or in our immediate environment and regularly come into contact with it through our social commitment," explains Felix Xiong, who is studying business informatics at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). He and his co-founder Johannes Kurz, a Master's student in Technology Entrepreneurship at Karlsruhe University of Applied Sciences, got to know each other in the innovation team of the university group "Enactus KIT". "We quickly agreed that we wanted to address the issue of prejudice, stereotypes and discrimination, as this is a major, omnipresent social problem in Germany," recalls Xiong. Xiong takes on the role of technical project manager and Kurz the role of business project manager.

Aufklärwerk now has a team of nine behind it. In addition to the prize, the start-up has celebrated further successes: "We have already been able to win over the first offers and organizations," says Xiong. "In addition, we are already being supported by KSC and Volkswohnung GmbH through the 'KSC tut gut.' initiative and have also been able to win our first business partner, i.e. supporters and sponsors from the world of business."

They recently went live with the platform and want to continue developing it further. In the future, Aufklärwerk wants to further expand the network and become better known.