More about our story

The idea for an international JCI Chapter in Berlin has been growing since 2018. Over the last few years, the local Berlin Chapter was contacted by multiple interested people who did not speak German. Not surprising, since Berlin is the city with the highest proportion of foreigners in Germany. Although it was always tried to organise translation, joining fully was difficult, since every WJ and Jaycee wishes to be able to contribute fully and not speaking German was making that challenging.

In 2019 we met members of JCI The Heart of Europe, the English-speaking JCI chapter in Brussels, for the first time at a JCI event. A solution for members who don’t speak the local language? We were immediately convinced that we also needed THAT in Berlin.

For the entire year 2020, the official language of the “International” working group of the WJ Kreis Berlin/JCI Berlin was set to English: communication, events, documentation. We thought at first a separate chapter wouldn’t be necessary, but by the end of the year the international interested parties gave us the feedback that just converting one working group to English meant they still miss out on a large part of the group work.

But we didn’t want to give up. In 2021 we restarted the project. This time we were determined to start our own chapter. We took a lot of time to define our vision and mission, our target group and stakeholders as well as our unique selling proposition. Slowed down by Covid, the time had finally come in June 2022: We launched our first physical event to find like-minded people for our big goal: to shape the future of our intercultural city together. We benefit from the internationality and interculturality in Berlin and Brandenburg through new ideas and diverse experiences. We want to bring together new WJ/JCI members and those moving to us to build an international, English-speaking community.

The first months of 2023 15 different nationalities and many internationally minded Germans together and the official foundation of JCI Berlin International came together.

On June 26th we became “official” – our foundation happened. All the interested members joined the 1st General Assembly and approved the Constitution and elected the board members.