beVisioneers: The Mercedes-Benz Fellowship.

To raise the seed capital for this program, Mercedes-Benz auctioned off the most valuable car in history in May 2022, an SLR Uhlenhaut Coupe from 1955, which went for the record sum of 135 million euros.

The non-profit organization The DO School Fellowships developed the concept for beVisioneers and is also responsible for the implementation. beVisioneers is aimed at creative, committed people between 16 and 28 years of age, who have promising ideas for projects in the areas of environmental protection and decarbonization. The participants are selected by The DO School and come from different countries and walks of life.

In the pilot year 2023, the program was initially accessible to young people from India, South Africa and a number of European countries. More than a thousand applications were submitted between January and March, from which The DO School Fellowships selected the first 102 participants. The program provided the fellows with access to project financing and – if required – further financial or material support. However, at the heart of the program is a broad-based learning and coaching curriculum, which focuses on leadership, entrepreneurship and sustainability. The fellows are also provided with a personal mentor during the twelve-month hybrid learning phase. Mercedes-Benz has encouraged all interested employees to become involved as mentors in beVisioneers or similar initiatives.

The community is to grow to up to 10,000 fellows and their supporters by 2030. The participants in the third beVisioneers year, which starts in June, come from more than 55 countries. In addition to the existing countries, Tanzania, Rwanda, Zimbabwe, Panama, Costa Rica, Chile, Japan, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand are joining the ranks.

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.