Dear Posteo customers,

We have a brief announcement:
Because of the increasing spread of the coronavirus, our Posteo Lab, located on top of Berlin’s “Kreuzberg”, will remain closed until further notice.

Our Posteo Lab is our public space in Berlin.
Interested parties can normally come and visit daily between 3 and 6 p.m. to test out Posteo, add credit to their accounts and ask questions.

We apologise to everyone who planned to visit in the near future. We appreciate your understanding.
We will make a new post in our blog as soon as we open the lab again.

The background behind closing the lab is that we have recommended to our team that they work from home whenever possible already since the end of February.
Because of this, we are no longer able to consistently have staff in the lab. We also would like to reduce the risk of infection with this temporary closure. Apart from that, our business operations are not affected by the coronavirus. You can send all inquiries via email to support@posteo.de and can add credit to your account again online.

Best regards,
The Posteo Team

Dear Posteo customers and interested parties,

We have a transparency notice for you: we have updated our donations page. On this page, we document the organisations that we financially supported during the previous year (2019).

Over the past year, we donated a total of 44,500 EUR. Of this, 42,045 EUR constituted voluntary donations by Posteo. The remaining 2455 EUR came from users that donated remaining credit when terminating their account. In comparison with the previous year, we were able to increase our donations in 2019 by 3900 EUR.

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It is important to us that we encourage social engagement and take responsibility as a company.
Because of this, we donate to selected charitable organisations in the areas of environment and climate protection, internet politics and freedom of opinion, as well as refugee aid.

Posteo donated to the following organisations in 2019:

BUND:
Bund für Umwelt und Naturschutz Deutschland (BUND) is one of the largest German environmental organisations. Throughout Germany there are more than 2,000 voluntary BUND groups engaged with regional environmental topics. BUND is also engaged with climate protection, ecological agriculture and protection of threatened species, forests and water. BUND is the German member of the international environmental network, “Friends of the Earth”.

ECCHR:
The European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) is engaged with legal measures for human rights. The ECCHR lawyers’ aim is to hold state and non-state actors legally accountable for grave human rights abuses. Among others, the ECCHR was founded in 2007 by human rights lawyer Wolfgang Kaleck, who represents whistleblower Edward Snowden in Germany.

Netzpolitik.org:
netzpolitik.org is a journalistic platform for digital freedom rights and presents the important debates and developments about the internet. The platform documents how politics is changing the internet and society through regulation and the continued expansion of surveillance laws. With its work, netzpolitik.org wants to encourage people to become engaged for their digital freedom rights and an open society.

Reporters Without Borders:
Reporters Without Borders engages itself worldwide for freedom of the press and freedom of information. The organisation documents violations against freedom of the press and supports journalists that are in danger. Reporters Without Borders combats censorship and restrictive media laws.

UNICEF – Living Schools
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has been advocating for the health, education and rights of children and mothers in 190 countries since 1946. UNICEF is politically involved against the use of child soldiers and for protecting refugees and for implementing the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Posteo supports the project Living Schools in Malawi. Schools are being built there that are based on principles of ecological awareness, e-learning and participation in decision-making. The schools have their own water supply system for clean drinking water and sanitation, use solar energy and teach about environmental protection in their school gardens. E-learning opportunities are also available to the nearby community.

UNO-Flüchtlingshilfe:
UNO-Flüchtlingshilfe is the German offshoot of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). It ensures the survival of refugees in acute crisis situations with life-saving emergency measures. UNO-Flüchtlingshilfe thus provides for sufficient supplies of water, food and medicines in refugee camps or regions that are hard to access, for example.

In addition to these donations, Posteo also sponsored in 2019:

taz – Panter Stiftung
Twice a year, the taz Academy invites 20 young journalists and activists to Berlin to produce a supplement together for the daily newspaper. In 2019 the subject was “Save the environment? Of course, but how?”. Posteo supported the climate workshop as a sponsor.

Reporters Without Borders – Press Freedom Awards
The Press Freedom Awards given by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) honours particularly courageous and independent journalists who will not be silenced despite adverse circumstances and great danger to life and limb. In 2019, Posteo donated the prize money for the “Courage” category in journalism.

Posteo does business sustainably and is independent. Our service is financed entirely by our customers’ account fees. There are no investors or advertising partners at Posteo. You are what makes our involvement in these projects possible. We thank you very much for helping to make a difference.

Best regards,
The Posteo team

Dear Posteo customers,

The Press Freedom Awards given by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) honours particularly courageous and independent journalists who will not be silenced despite adverse circumstances and great danger to life and limb. Posteo is donating the prize money for the “Courage” category in journalism.

It’s a pleasure for us to be able to support courageous media representatives in such a way. On September 12th, the Press Freedom Awards will be held in Berlin for the first time.

This year’s nominees for three prize categories hail from 12 different countries. Among them is a Russian investigative journalist who has already been the target of multiple attacks, a Vietnamese journalist who has been beaten and imprisoned because of her work as well as Pakistan’s oldest daily newspaper that has been repeatedly harrassed by officials.

The nominees from the “Courage” category sponsored by Posteo






Igor Rudnikov (Russia) – There have been multiple attacks directed towards the founder of the independent newspaper Novye Kolesa because of his research on corruption and public fund embezzlement. Furthermore, he was arrested because of his work. In prison he continued to write articles and a book that contains the quote: “Thought cannot be handcuffed or thrown in prison. It will always be free.”






Eman Al-Nafjan (Saudi Arabia) – The blogger and journalist has campaigned massively for women to be allowed to drive cars and to have more rights. Because of this, she was arrested. Currently she has been temporarily freed. She created the website SaudiWoman.me and writes for international media outlets like the British newspaper The Guardian and the New York Times. Since mid-2018 the state has also permitted women to drive cars.






Paolo Borrometi (Italy) – He is regularly threated with death because of his fearless reporting about the mafia and is constantly under police protection. He writes for the newspaper Giornale di Sicilia and his own website La Spia.






Lola Aronovich (Brazil) – The blogger has made a name for herself with her feminist texts and commitment to women’s rights. At the same time she has been treated increasingly with hostility. She receives hundreds of death threats online. Since 2018, a law has been put into effect in Brazil that enhances traceability for misogynistic crimes online. It has also been called the “Lola Law”.

Our support

It is important to us to encourage social engagement and to take responsibility as a company. We therefore support selected charitable organisations in the areas of climate and environmental protection, internet politics and freedom of opinion, as well as refugee aid.

Best regards,
The Posteo Team

Improving maps in Nigeria — all the way from Kreuzberg. This was made possible on August 14th in our Berlin-located Posteo Lab, where a new Missing Maps Group hosted their first German mapathon. With guidance from Missing Maps, volunteers improve online maps at mapathons by plotting villages and streets on satellite imagery. At the events organised by Missing Maps, OpenStreetMaps of crisis regions are improved upon. This can, for example, aide relief organisations in planning their operations more effectively.

Missing Maps is a humanitarian project that was founded in November 2014 by the American and British Red Cross, the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team and Doctors Without Borders. Since then, Missing Maps has regularly organised mapathons in various European countries. About 17 interested parties participated in the first German event at Posteo Lab. #more#
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The focus of the event in Berlin was satellite imagery of Niger State in western Nigeria. Currently there are active teams from medical relief organisations that need more precise maps of the region for their work.

The mapathon began with a detailed introduction by Marcel Werdier from the organisation Missing Maps. He clearly explained in a presentation how mapping works. He also demonstrated the required programs and outlined the most important rules for plotting maps to the volunteers.

After the presentation, the volunteers could immediately apply their newly gained knowledge and began plotting maps on the laptops they had brought with them. They analysed satellite imagery and plotted streets and villages with just a few clicks. The team from Missing Maps helped the participants and answered all questions that came up.

At the end, there was a final presentation where the volunteers could see the progress of their collective efforts made on the maps. The knowledge they gained from this experience can continue to be applied when mapping in private.

The team from Missing Maps was very satisfied with their premiere mapathon in Germany. There are plans to organise more evenings like this one in Berlin.

Background Information
Because we want to strengthen social engagement, we regularly make Posteo Lab available to charitable associations and organisations free of charge. It’s important to us that the events hosted at Posteo match our values in sustainability, technology, democracy, open source, internet politics, IT security and privacy. If you’re interested in hosting an event here, send us an inquiry at veranstaltungen@posteo.de.

Posteo is financed 100 percent by user fees. We’d like to take this opportunity to thank our user for making our social engagement possible.

Dear Posteo customers and interested parties,

In the name of transparency we have updated our donations page, where we document the organisations that we financially supported during the previous year (2017).

During last year, Posteo donated a total of 34,600.00 EUR. Of this, 33,022.05 EUR constituted voluntary donations by Posteo. The remaining 1,577.95 EUR came from users that donated remaining credit when terminating their account.
In comparison with the previous year, we were able to increase our donations in 2017 by 5,000 EUR.

It is important to us that we encourage social engagement and take responsibility as a company.
Because of this, we donate to selected charitable organisations in the areas of environment and climate protection, internet politics and freedom of opinion, as well as refugee aid. #more#

Posteo donated to the following organisations in 2017:

BUND:
Bund für Umwelt und Naturschutz Deutschland (BUND) is one of the largest German environmental organisations. Throughout Germany there are more than 2,000 voluntary BUND groups engaged with regional environmental topics. BUND is also engaged with climate protection, ecological agriculture and protection of threatened species, forests and water. BUND is the German member of the international environmental network, “Friends of the Earth”.

German Red Cross (DRK):
The German Red Cross (DRK) is one of the largest German help organisations. The DRK is active worldwide and can be present anywhere in the world in co-operation with partner organisations. In the face of the threat of climate change, the DRK has realised multiple projects along with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to support people internationally who suffer from the effects of climate change. Our donations go towards a project in the Amazon in Peru, where 1.3 million people are acutely threatened by the increase in extreme weather events due to climate change. The donations are used to set up houses with secure architecture on raised platforms. In addition, blankets and hygiene kits are distributed and a health service set up.

ECCHR:
The European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) is engaged with legal measure for human rights. The ECCHR lawyers’ aim is to hold state and non-state actors legally accountable for grave human rights abuses. Among others, the ECCHR was founded in 2007 by human rights lawyer Wolfgang Kaleck, who represents whistleblower Edward Snowden in Germany.

netzpolitik.org:
netzpolitik.org is a journalistic platform for digital freedom rights and presents the most important debates and developments on the topic of the internet. The platform documents how politics is changing the internet and society through regulation and the continued expansion of surveillance laws. With its work, netzpolitik.org wants to encourage people to become engaged for their digital freedom rights and an open society.

Reporters Without Borders:
Reporters Without Borders engages itself worldwide for freedom of the press and freedom of information. The organisation documents violations against freedom of the press and supports journalists that are in danger. Reporters Without Borders combats censorship and restrictive media laws.

UNO-Flüchtlingshilfe:
UNO-Flüchtlingshilfe is the German offshoot of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). It ensures the survival of refugees in acute crisis situations with life-saving emergency measures. UNO-Flüchtlingshilfe thus provides for sufficient supplies of water, food and medicines in refugee camps or regions that are hard to access, for example.

In addition to these donations, Posteo also sponsored taz.panterstiftung.

Posteo does business sustainably and is independent. Our service is financed entirely by our customers’ account fees. There are no investors or advertising partners at Posteo.
You are what makes our involvement in these projects possible. We thank you very much for helping to make a difference.

Best regards,
The Posteo team