Open Homes | 2011
We founded the Open Home Project together overnight in Berlin, Germany on March 15, 2011 as an immediate response to the earthquake and arising nuclear disaster in Japan. There was an immediate response from 1000 hosts throughout the world offering living spaces for guests from Japan.
It was very early clear to us, that it would not be sufficient to do a simple matching between guests and hosts. We knew that the people who were coming would all express special needs: schools, kindergartens, medical treatment, financial support, help with the visa, legal advice, flight tickets, questions concerning contamination and so on. The majority of our guests actually decided to start a new life in Germany beyond the 3 months that the tourist visa would grant.
