Christmas in Vienna is magnificent; nothing compares to holding a hot punsch between your palms and trying to warm up in the middle of illuminated, picturesque stalls in Spittelberg, Freyung or Belvedere. If you want to wander around blissfully, get into Christmas mood and check off all the Christmas markets, you can visit the Christmas Map of Vienna; a website featuring Christmas markets and events.

The Christmas Map is a fundraising project, created by the collaboration between two Vienna-based initiatives, the Internet of Ideas and the NGO Generation Europa. The idea behind this project was to make a crowdfunding campaign by creating a useful guide for locals and tourists. Many people from all over the world come to experience Christmas in Vienna, away from home and family dinners and they don’t always know all their options. From the luxurious hotel dinners and classical concerts to cozy gallery events, there are so many ways to experience Christmas in Vienna! The Christmas Map was also made for locals, to encourage them to experiment and try out new Christmas events and markets, instead of sticking to one or two they like since years.

The Internet of Ideas is a newly founded initiative based in Vienna. The team behind it, consisting of mainly expats, supports local creatives, art spaces and NGOs by creating synergies between them and consulting them on strategic and technical aspects and organizing workshops. They are interested in studying and enabling collaboration, because “this is where everything starts flourishing”. Their conceptual work entitled “Idea Machine”  has received the Public Choice’s Award from Departure, Vienna’s Creative Agency. They are already building a platform to enable collaboration between local creatives, art spaces and NGOs and the funds created by the Christmas Map will fuel this effort.

Generation Europa is a Vienna-based NGO specialized in intercultural education and active in promoting intercultural communication. In 2015, Generation Europa received the Youth Project Award of the European Union for a youth exchange program they organized focused on issues, tools and processes of Digital democracy. The program invited young people from Middle East, Russia and Europe involved in social projects to come to Vienna in order to discuss Democracy and the implications of the digital era on it, learn about tools and practice in small groups what they learnt. Generation Europa believes that intercultural education work and youth exchanges can have a significant impact in peacemaking politics, so their goal is to improve the quality and scale the youth exchanges.

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