On his 80th birthday, the entrepreneur and founder Reinhard Mohn received the "Reinhard Mohn Fellowship" from the Executive Board of Bertelsmann AG as a gift. The Fellowship honors the achievements of Reinhard Mohn's life: on the one hand, it encourages social entrepreneurs from all areas of society, and on the other it communicates the Bertelsmann corporate culture and management philosophy to other sectors of society.

The objective of the Reinhard Mohn Fellowship program was to impart new knowledge and practical skills to social entrepreneurs, thereby enabling them to advance their own projects in their respective areas of social activity. To achieve this, we invited the carefully selected Reinhard Mohn Fellows to work in our international media company for twelve-month periods.

Over the past six years, three year-based groups with a total of 14 Fellows have been able to enhance their fields of competence at Bertelsmann. They experienced entrepreneurship and the various facets of the Bertelsmann corporate culture. Today, after six years of intensive learning and some 1,000 applicants from all parts of the globe and every conceivable area in society, we are winding up the Reinhard Mohn Fellowship. In the future we are going to refocus our activities in the field of corporate responsibility.

We are going to maintain the Reinhard Mohn Fellowship Network, an amalgamation of all the participants in the selection conferences - the experiences we have gained during our cooperation will help us to develop new projects in the future.