Help us save coral reefs

Still overwhelmed by the successful crowdfunding, we report back in the new year. A huge thank you at this point to everyone who has actively supported us, and we hope you all got your rewards! Postcard rewards will be sent from Colombia, the Wall of Fame will appear on our website soon, and the ocean lovers dinner in Zürich is obviously dependent on Covid measures. We will keep you informed and can’t wait!

Encouraged by your broad support, we deepened and refined our planning in January with a lot of verve and our vision in focus, and are more than ready to take off.

Since the 20th of January, we have been busy printing bricks, 22 so far. We are making sure to print a variety of different structures so that we can later analyse the structural preferences of various coral larvae species and see which features boost biodiversity most strongly.

If you have not seen it, our work was covered by SRF Tagesschau in their series «Women 2021», which marked the 50th anniversary of national voting rights for women. They portrayed five women who have big plans and visions for 2021. Ulrike was one of them! Check out the TV feature here: https://bit.ly/35hJrrU

And the newspaper Le Temps has also dedicated an article to us in the report «Raisons d’espérer» - which featured Marie as a «reason to hope». What an honour! The article is here: https://bit.ly/2NlYOcu

Finally, we noticed that we can reach many of you only with WEMAKEIT News. We will keep posting updates here, of course, but we invite you to subscribe to our newsletter (on rrreefs.com), and join our Instagram or Facebook accounts @rrreefs.

More exciting news very soon!

Warm greetings from Zürich, the rrreefs team

(for French and German scroll down)

It is done! Wow. 452 amazing humans have supported rrreefs with over 70’000 CHF! We are incredibly grateful for all of you. You are an integral part of the rrreefs community now and we can’t wait to share next year’s journey with you.

In January, we will kick off with the detailed planning of the reef building workshop - together with Corales de Paz. We also have many calls scheduled already for collaborations and possible long-term funding opportunities. In February, we can hopefully go to the Maldives and do the final analyses of our structure tests. Which structure results in the highest biodiversity of small animals? The year will continue with a lot of 3D printing of rrreef bricks, structuring our organization, supervising students that are working on pilot reef 2.0, and much more. And in September, finally, we will build our pilot reef 1.0 in San Andrés, which is the most exciting event of the year. Obviously. September/October is spawning time for corals there, and we can’t wait to see baby corals settle on the new rrreef you all made possible.

We wish everyone happy holidays! You will hear from us again in the new year, we need some time ’almost’ offline now. :)

Warm regards, Ulrike and Marie ——————————————-

Et voilà, nous y sommes arrivé.e.s ! C’est merveilleux ! 452 humains extraordinaires ont soutenu rrreefs avec plus de 70’000 CHF ! Nous sommes incroyablement reconnaissant.e.s pour vous tous. Vous faîtes maintenant partie intégrante de la communauté des récifs coralliens! Nous sommes impatient.e.s de partager avec vous nos aventures de l’année prochaine.

En janvier, nous commencerons par la planification détaillée du workshop pour reconstruction les récifs - en collaboration avec Corales de Paz. Nous avons également prévu de nombreux appels pour des futures collaborations et d’éventuelles possibilités de financement à long terme. En février, nous espérons pouvoir nous rendre aux Maldives et faire les analyses finales de nos tests de structures. Connaître enfin, quelles surface permettrons d’obtenir la plus grande biodiversité de petits animaux.

L’année se poursuivra aussi avec beaucoup d’impressions 3D de rrreef briques, mais aussi la structuration de notre organisation, et la supervision des étudiants qui travaillent sur le récif pilote 2.0. Enfin en septembre, nous construirons notre récif-pilote 1.0 à San Andrés! Ce qui est l’événement le plus passionnant de l’année, évidemment! Septembre/octobre est la période de reproduction pour les coraux là-bas, et nous sommes impatients de voir les bébés coraux s’installer sur le nouveau récif que vous avez tous rendu possible!

Vous recevrez de nos nouvelles d’ici le début de l’année 2021, car nous allons nous mettre en mode presque «offline» dès maintenant! :) Nous vous souhaitons à tous.x.tes de belles fêtes de fin d’année!

Chaleureusement, Marie et Ulrike ———————————————-

Wir haben es geschafft! Wow. 452 wunderbare Menschen haben rrreefs mit über 70’000 CHF unterstützt! Wir sind euch allen unglaublich dankbar. Ihr seid jetzt ein fester Bestandteil der rrreefs-Community und wir können es kaum erwarten, die Ereignisse des nächsten Jahres mit euch zu teilen.

Im Januar beginnen wir mit der detaillierten Planung des Riff-Bau-Workshops - zusammen mit Corales de Paz. Diverse Meetings für neue Kooperationen und sogar mögliche langfristige Finanzierungsmöglichkeiten sind auch schon gebucht. Im Februar können wir hoffentlich auf den Malediven die endgültigen Analysen unserer Strukturtests durchführen. Welche Struktur führt zur höchsten Artenvielfalt von Kleintieren? Weiter geht das Jahr mit dem 3D-Drucken vieler neuer Riffbausteine, dem Strukturieren von rrreefs als Organisation, und der Betreuung von Studenten, die bereits unser Pilot-Riff 2.0 entwickeln werden. Und im September werden wir dann endlich unser Pilot-Riff 1.0 in San Andrés bauen - natürlich das aufregendste Ereignis des Jahres. September / Oktober ist dort Laichzeit für Korallen, und wir können es kaum erwarten, die erstem Babykorallen auf dem neuen rrreef zu finden, das ihr alle zusammen ermöglicht habt.

Wir wünschen euch allen frohe Festtage! Ihr werdet im neuen Jahr wieder von uns hören, wir brauchen jetzt mal etwas Zeit «fast» offline. :)

Herzliche Grüsse, Ulrike und Marie

(Please open the whole comment - important info at the end. ;) )

From the bottom of our hearts, thanks so much for making this possible! We are sending virtual corona-safe hugs out to all of you. We are incredibly excited we made it. Altogether, we achieved our goal of 60’000 CHF.

This means we can now go and build the Colombian pilot rrreef, and show you how it evolves, with new life moving into your bricks and all around! That is amazing, and we are looking forward to sharing this journey with you.

Now, you have probably seen that a new goal appeared - the STRETCHGOAL. No reason to be afraid of the high target of 100’000 CHF, because everything from now on will be paid out and support our project. Anything that goes beyond the 60’000 CHF will greatly help us with the research and development that will improve our system even more! It will go towards supervising Master and PhD students, as well as materials and infrastructure for experiments.

–> That is why we ask you for JUST ONE MORE PUSH! <–

If all of us find just ONE PERSON that wants to support this within the next 48 hours, we might even get to 100’000 CHF, enabling us to scale up our approach to help coral reefs FASTER!

Let’s do this! Who could be interested in supporting the rrreefs - a parent, sibling, best friend, maybe your colleague? Just 2 days to go!

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Here is a nice article about rrreefs that just came out in the ETH Globe magazine, which may help convince people: https://ethz.ch/en/news-and-events/eth-news/news/2020/12/save-the-reef.html

We first prototyped, then built our rrreef brick christmas tree at our dear friends’ coworking space VN residency. And we built it for you!

If you are in or around Zürich, we invite you to meet us OUTSIDE on VN Residency’s terrace for a corona-safe, brief end-of-crowdfunding drink! Come and say hello, pick up your crowdfunding rewards to save packaging and mail, check out your adopted brick on the tree, and have a prosecco with us at a distance (and behind your mask!).

For us all to stay safe, please tell us until Wednesday night (tomorrow) if you want to come. We will limit the amount of people to 10 at a time, which means it will be a short visit, masks mandatory.

Nevertheless, we hope to see you there!

Where VN Residency, Lessingstrasse 15, 8002 Zürich When Friday, 5-7 pm

Please tell us here, if you are coming:
https://bit.ly/3qV6JNl

Dear supporters, friends, fellow ocean lovers.

Thank you so much for already being a part of the rrreefs community. We are in the third week of the campaign now and WE NEED YOU to share this campaign around as much as you can.

Christmas is around the corner. There are probably more people out there that would love to dedicate a rrreef brick, soon full of life, to a beloved person.

Let’s make this a success, let’s build that reef and help the ocean with the combined strength of this community!

So please, SHARE our WeMakeIt page (in your favorite language) on your favorite social networks, on your email newsletter, whatsapp groups, or just tell your parents about it. :) The easiest way is to just click the buttons beneath our video on the main page, add a personal sentence, and voila!

Thanks a lot! Danke vielmals! Muchas gracias! Merci beaucoup! Grazie mille!

Ulrike and Marie

We just spoke to Corales de Paz - our partners in Colombia. The Colombian islands of Providencia and San Andrés were both hit by the recent hurricanes. People on Providencia Island, and the coral reefs around the island suffered a lot - they lost everything. But also the west side of San Andrés Island experienced a lot of destruction both above and below water. Some reefs are not recognizable, and important dive sites - a pillar of the island’s tourism - were destroyed.

The building of our pilot reef will be embedded in the local efforts to recreate both reef life and meaningful diving activities! We are so happy that we can support the people of San Andrés Island like this.

Our reef-building workshop will happen IN SEPTEMBER 2021 on San Andrés Island, Colombia, and run for 10 days! The weather and conditions will be good at this time. With our reef, we will create new habitat for reef life, and an attractive spot for ecotourism, helping to re-establish a part of the local economy.

Stay tuned for exact dates, but book the workshop NOW if September works for you. And share this with your friends that might be interested.

Warm regards, Ulrike and Marie.

Dear Ocean lovers,

We’ve noticed that a lot of our participants and supporters speak Spanish. We therefore have just made Spanish subtitles! You can now share with more people around you, and help our mission succeed. You may also find French and German subtitles, and for hearing impaired people, we have English subtitles as well.

¡Muchas gracias a tod@s !

Wow, we are so grateful for your incredible support, everyone! It is looking really good for our pilot reef and that gives us lots of energy. Thank you so much.

In the meantime, if you want to dive a bit deeper into the science, check out this talk by our co-founder Ulrike. She was invited to speak at World.Minds Zürich last year in December. What an honor!

Since the talk, Ulrike has left ETH Zürich to pour 100 % of her time into rrreefs and make this project come to life, but we are of course still collaborating with ETH Zürich for our research!

With warm regards from Zürich, Marie and Ulrike