Monday mornings sometimes need a bit of a boost, don’t they? Well, just a few weeks ago Maxie’s beaming face arrived in the Ruby office and gave us just that. “We have won a prize!” – her excitement was infectious and quickly brightened a grey morning. It is news like that which starts off the week in exactly the right way.

This year the Wilhelm Löhe University in Fürth, a city in the south of Germany launched a prize for “Entrepreneurship, Education, Health and Social Affairs”. The prize is awarded to organizations and ventures with innovative perspectives who explore their initiatives through science and practice.

Ruby Cup are incredibly honored to have been awarded the Wilhelm Löhe Prize this year, and granted 5000 EUR to continue our work in Kenya. The money will flow directly into our education programs and the training work ran by our Kenyan partners. This money allows us to invest more capital and more focus in an area that needs it the most. Our partners on the ground in Kenya run fantastic educational sessions alongside the distribution of Ruby Cups to young women and girls. We have set ourselves the goal that by the middle of 2015 we will have distributed a further 10,000 Ruby Cups through our partnership with the Golden Girls Foundation. The Wilhelm Löhe prize will help us by co-financing this work and will allow us to further develop our collaboration with local partners.

I received the award on behalf of the Ruby Cup team this month, and discussed our work with the many students and fellows at the university. Talking to the Bachelor and Master Students was so inspiring. All at the Ruby Cup team have enjoyed great relationships with our universities, and still benefit from the inspiring and supportive connections that we made there. Dr, Elmar Nass, Professor of Economy and Social Ethics at the Wilhelm Löhe University was particularly interested in our projects in Kenya, and we shared some great, insightful discussions.

The prize was established to commemorate the work of Wilhelm Löhe (1808-1872). He was a pioneer within the field of social work, and had a progressive approach towards management under social & ethical aspects. Today, the Wilhelm Löhe University has a strong focus on health, social management and ethics.

From Ruby Cup, we give huge thanks to the Wilhelm Löhe University – we are honored to have been awarded the prize, and we are so excited to put the funds into action and continue the work with our Kenyan partners.

 Eva Brandt, Ruby Cup Sales & Customer Relations