After two weeks of being knocked out by Covid19, I might just be able to get my Christmas greetings out in time …What a year it has been: This year, I have ended my work with the truly amazing European Climate Foundation and founded Talking Hope, where we focus on tackling the interconnected crises of climate, democracy, social injustice and public health.

Besides our systemic approach to these issues, our mission is to create consensus for change and drive positive transformation, through solution-oriented campaigns and communication strategies focused on connecting systems and communities to work together towards positive transformation.

Just over six months on, Talking Hope has grown in team, outreach and network. We have completed our first projects, amongst others in cooperation with Initiative Klimaneutrales Deutschland, German Council on Foreign Relations, European Council on Foreign Relations, German Institute for Defence and Strategic Studies as well as Stiftung Adam Von Trott, Imshausen E.V. Thank you for putting your trust in us and thank you for the great cooperation.

What I wish for all of us for the next year is – hope. Not a pink, comfortable “All-will-be-fine” attitude. No, that would be withdrawing into comfort-zones we really can no longer afford.

But I wish us the hope that recognizes that we can actually change the world around us. Experienced from within, our crises of today seem insurmountable and change impossible or dishearteningly slow. Yet haven’t all large social transformations in history begun with dreams that appeared almost naive – abolition, women’s rights, workers rights, democracy itself?    

I am less frightened by the climate crisis than by hearing more and more people say “I am switching off the news” or “I can’t do anything” or “I am drowning in fear of the future”.

So here I am putting my New Year’s wish out: We have all the solutions for the climate crisis; not a single further invention would be needed to solve it. And we can address injustice and strengthen our democracies if we come together by recognizing our shared humanity.

Naïve? Maybe. But that’s probably what Rosa Parks felt, too, when she stepped on the bus in Alabama in 1955. Or Emmeline Pankhurst, when she put her kids to bed and went back to the next suffragettes’ meeting just over 100 years ago. Or Martin Luther, when he hammered his theses to that church door in 1517.

Call them the historical clowns of their times, but did they not all change the world from small beginnings?

So this is what I wish for all of us today.  Let’s not give up. We can do this. Together.