In this episode of Chasing Impact,  MzN Senior Consultant Carolin Gomulia interviews Lydia Sleifir from War Child Deutschland about the challenges and joys of co-founding an NGO. In 2019, Lydia founded War Child Deutschland together with Dannie Quilitzsch. The duo ran the organisation as a joint directorship team while both working part-time. They can look back on three successful, but also challenging, years.

In this episode, Lydia talks about:
– the decision to found War Child Deutschland
– how to get funding for a start-up NGO
– the major obstacles she experienced to getting funding
– what she would have done differently in hindsight
– what it was like to start the NGO as part of a duo, together with Dannie
– the key takeaways from her three years as War Child executive director

Who is Lydia Sleifir?

Lydia was one of the founders of War Child Deutschland and is currently one of the managing directors. Her role at War Child Deutschland is to manage international relations and partnerships, programmes, human resources, finance, controlling and operations. She gained her experience in the development cooperation and humanitarian aid at Plan International Germany and, prior to founding War Child, worked as a consultant.

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