beVisioneers: The Mercedes-Benz Fellowship.

In May 2022, Mercedes-Benz auctioned the most valuable car ever sold, a 1955 SLR Uhlenhaut Coupé. The record-breaking price of €135 million served as the initial funding for the program.

The non-profit organisation The DO School Fellowships gGmbH (“The DO School gGmbH”) developed the concept for beVisioneers and is also responsible for its implementation. The program is designed for creative, dedicated young individuals with promising ideas for environmental projects. Participants are selected by The DO School gGmbH and come from diverse countries and backgrounds.

In its pilot year in 2023, the program was initially open to young people from India, South Africa and selected European countries. Between January and March 2023, more than one thousand applications were submitted, from which the first 102 participants were selected by The DO School gGmbH.

With a specially designed qualification measure, the Impact Mentor Training, Mercedes-Benz employees are given the opportunity to develop their own skills as mentors and gain valuable perspectives that they can apply in their professional environment. However, the training also qualifies them to take on a mentoring role in their private environment, for example for scholarship recipients in the beVisioneers or similar programs. In this way, Mercedes-Benz employees can support a young person outside the company in driving sustainable change and contribute to their own development in the process. The training offers employees valuable perspectives that they can apply in their professional environment as part of their own continuing education. As an employer, Mercedes-Benz benefits when employees advance their personal development through such training or special mentoring experiences. The more colleagues gain this experience over the years, the deeper and more comprehensive their understanding of the company's sustainable transformation becomes.