Sign (or create) a petition for an issue important to you

What is this commitment about?

A petition is, according to Article 17 of the German Grundgesetz, a request or complaint that any person in Germany can approach to the competent authorities and the people's representatives. They are thereby a central means of carrying important concerns from the population to decision makers and the public. The greater the number of signatories, the greater the likelihood that an issue will even result in a change in regulations and laws - such as in 2019 with the reduction in VAT for menstruation products.

It is important to note that age or nationality do not play a role in the creation or signing of petitions, it is open to anyone. This distinguishes them from a referendum, which can only be signed by eligible German citizens.

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What are 5-Minute Commitments?

With our 5-Minute Commitments, we want to inspire you to easily integrate commitment into your everyday life. They are independent of non-profit organizations and allow you to individually engage for people and nature in your neighborhood.

Your Tasks

Think about what issue moves you and for which you want change. Even if you may not yet know exactly what you want to change. You can then search for this topic on petition sites and see if someone else perhaps has already created a petition with a concrete demand for it that you would like to support. If not, you can start your own petition. The important thing here is to share the petition with as many people as possible and get a lot of attention.

There are various platforms for submitting or signing petitions:

• E-Petitions of the Bundestag | If a petition reaches 50,000 votes, the petitioner is heard in a public committee meeting and the concern is discussed by the relevant authorities.
• Change.org | The world's largest petition platform for social change. Petitions are brought to decision-makers via campaigns.
• Openpetition.org | The platform was launched by Campact, among others, and supports people from the creation to the delivery of a petition.

What's needed

Signing (or creating) petitions only requires Internet access.

Time required

If you have an idea of the issue you want to advocate for with your petition, it shouldn't take long to search and sign.

This project is location independent.

We are a social enterprise from Berlin with a big dream: We want a world in which everyone contributes to a better and more sustainable future according to their possibilities and regardless of time budget, language or previous knowledge. For this purpose, we gather on vostel.de numerous engagement offers from non-profit organizations that are looking for volunteers. By doing this, we show concrete possibilities for action in order to become socially active and would like to motivate above all the younger generations to get involved for a better world.