Raise a Smile Hostel Berlin: About Raise a Smile
Raise a Smile - The Zambian Children's Charity
Raise a Smile is a non-profit Anglo-German charity organisation that was founded by young people with the aim of supporting children through various projects in Zambia (a developing country in Southern Africa). The projects that we support are working towards sustainably improving the lives of orphans and other vulnerable or underprivileged children. The main focus of this charity is therefore in the education sector. The idea of Raise a Smile came about during the time spent in Zambia by some of our founding members when they saw various projects with lots of potential to succeed but without the necessary funding to achieve that potential.
The Raise a Smile hostel in Berlin was opened with the intention of creating a new revenue stream for the charity. All profit from the hostel goes directly to the Raise a Smile charity.
Currently we only support existing projects, however, our long term plan is to set up a project of our own. Often in developing countries such as Zambia, schools attended by poor children have a considerably lower standard of education than those attended by the children of rich families. With this project we hope to offer underprivileged children a better chance in life by providing an education that does much more than just teaching them basic reading, writing and arithmetic. You can find out more about this project by visiting the projects page. Although the hostel will support our other projects the main aim of the hostel is to earn the funds to start this school project.
Raise a Smile volunteers make regular trips to Zambia (at their own expense) to ensure all donations are spent wisely and so we can have an up to date picture of what is happening. At our hostel in Berlin you can purchase crafts produced in projects we support, and see photos from our trips to Zambia.
You can learn more about the work that the charity does at the Raise a Smile home page.
