Hello Hubbies,

Made IN – made BY (mimb) is a Social Business that through the conduction of clothing manufacture. It intends to offer fair working conditions to female immigrants facing disadvantages or difficulties in entering the labour market. The unemployment rate is generally higher among non Austrian female citizens. Furthermore, women are more affected by poverty than men. mimb tackles these problems, strives to improve their social and economic situation and tries to encourage immigrant women to find productive self-realization. Through a hybrid strategy, mimb intends to promote the sustainability of its business. On the one hand mimb will produce for designers and companies with social and environmental concerns. On the other hand mimb will establish its own label making use of organic/local resources.

All women involved in the project so far had major importance and influence to the achievement of the activities that we have accomplished so far. In this way, our main success was the establishment of a committed, creative, and generous team. Our key moment was definitely our first meeting at the NGO Lefö on June 2011, where we got to know each other and decided to start together the mimb activities.

At the moment, we are evaluating our activities and planning strategies to improve our future work.
Our main goals for 2012 are to start capital by investing on machines, sewing material and wages (grants, prizes), to involve two more skilled seamstresses, to get our next sewing workshop funded through respekt.net. Moreover we want to produce our own designs, to develop a stronger network and to achieve start-up level.

If you want to check all the previous featured members on Hub’s Advent Calendar, take a look at our Facebook page: Hub Vienna’s Advent Calendar

Studienaktie.org is a project about providing meaningful and profitable investments in education. Our approach is to facilitate education for everyone. Therefore we coach people in developing their individual concept for life, provide financial support for their educational projects by winning private individuals as educational investors and encourage people to go their own individual way, taking ownership of their future. By investing in educational projects the investors get a threefold return: financial, social and personal.

In 2011 we started to look actively for Austrian individuals and institutions to invest in educational projects and to support our activities. We started a pilot project with the University of Arts Graz to give students the opportunity of financial help and mentoring by their lecturers. Furthermore, we initiated first cooperations with companies and regional associations.

As we believe that there is a high demand on financing educational projects in Austria we want to expand our activities to give everyone the chance to develop their personal concept of life and to take the first steps in realizing it.
In preparation of replicating our activities in Austria we want to focus on Vienna, Styria and Vorarlberg/Tirol in 2012.
If you want to check all the previous featured members on Hub’s Advent Calendar and stay updated of the upcoming ones, take a look at our Facebook page: Hub Vienna’s Advent Calendar

taliaYsebastian is an industrial design studio focused on human design concepts. We supply companies and organizations with design solutions that focus on human aspects that address economic, ecologic and human sustainability, using design and the creative process to address those issues.  This is our motivation and goal.

Key moments have been characterised in 2011 by good luck and trust. Luck led us to meet and connect with Architecture for Humanity, and it is with them that we will continue to focus on the global and local issue of safe drinking water in the coming year.
Trust in us a young and newly founded design studio by the German baby oral care company NUK has helped us to move forward with giant steps, both as designers as well as a service provider, and together with this our first big B2B client we have designed our first industrial product for better oral health habits. Furthermore, we have offered our services and have conceived solutions in education, drinking water supply and health care.

2012 is our Year of Water with the inevitable effect of contributing to the empowerment of women. Our goal is to establish ourselves as the human design studio in Austria. Safe drinking water is our main topic; our mission is to create a beautiful autarkic device to purify water in highland regions and our resolution for 2012 is to continue turning our optimism into efficient work by contributing to the millennium development goals.

If you want to check all the previous featured members on Hub’s Advent Calendar and stay updated of the upcoming ones, take a look at our Facebook page: Hub Vienna’s Advent Calendar

Theatania.at is a project about facilitating people’s access to theater and their decision for a play they would enjoy to watch. Therefore we gather information about the piece, the author, the theater, tickets and reviews on the website. In a next step theatania.at will also allow a Web 2.0 community to share their impressions and theater experiences online.

In 2011 I implemented the first step. I found people who are interested in supporting my idea and who help me to put it in action.

For next year, I am looking forward to get the website online and find a user community. Furthermore I need to find out in which direction our development can be reasonable and worthy.

If you want to check all the previous featured members on Hub’s Advent Calendar and stay updated of the upcoming ones, take a look at our Facebook page: Hub Vienna’s Advent Calendar

Two marketing bodes, Mike and Moriz, want to make sustainable jeans. They give up their jobs and flats, attend sewing seminars and textile fairs and learn from producers between China and Italy everything there is to know about the perfect pair of jeans. After more than 100 years, the blue “uniform” is leaving the factory to the buttlab, where it can now be produced according to customers’ wishes and in an ecofair production context. GEBRUDER STITCH not only redefines the production process but brings back textile-craftsmanship to Vienna.

We started in 2010 with far more people coming to our Betastore than we could serve! The highlights of the last two years were that we meet hell of a kind reception in Vienna, the comprehensive media coverage, the participation in the Vienna fashion week and the festival of fashion of photography only a couple of weeks after we started our business. 2011 was about solving some teething problems and establishing the basic infrastructure and processes for serving more clients and becoming even more sustainable.

In 2012 we want to take a close look on our social impact, we want to make it measurable. We are going to introduce some new accessories and want bring our project to the next level.

Unfortunately we have to move from the buttlab, so we’ve got to find a new homebase for our project next year. Every hub member who has not been to the buttlab before has his last chance today (19.12.). From 5 to 9pm it is a hub-night@ the buttlab.

If you want to check all the previous featured members on Hub’s Advent Calendar and stay updated of the upcoming ones, take a look at our Facebook page: Hub Vienna’s Advent Calendar

At the end of last year I got involved in the project “Fair Future – der okologische Fu?abdruck” – a lecture series about the eco footprint at schools in Austria and Germany. After a while, I decided with a friend to develop a new form of school campaigns, so “reif” started. Reif designes and implements beautiful, provocative, inspiring presentations that highlight some of the most important issues of our time like sustainable economies, energy transition or organic food production. It engages the audience by mixing pieces of award-winning documentaries with rock n’ roll lectures. Filmmakers, designers and activists are invited to build reif as a platform to enable students in Austria, Germany, Switzerland and beyond to realize their ideas of a better tomorrow.

2011 was a great year. With “Fair Future” I reached over 20.000 students. Some of them have started their own little projects, like selling fair trade products in their schools and challenging old conventions. In November we started “reif” and can’t wait to get the approval by the “Bundespolizeidirektion Wien” to get started on the design process.

Filmmakers like Carl Fechner are already working with us to distill strong statements from their award-winning documentaries. For 2012 we are looking forward to add more contributors to the project. Also, we are in the process of finding designers to create a simple but visually stunning identity for “reif”. Our goal is to deliver the first customized presentations to students and communities in the second quarter of 2012.

 
If you want to check all the previous featured members on Hub’s Advent Calendar and stay updated of the upcoming ones, take a look at our Facebook page: Hub Vienna’s Advent Calendar