MAROUF ADEYEMI e.V.
Why we registered, after eleven years without a form
On 1 July 2025 Marouf Adeyemi became an eingetragener Verein. Nothing about the work changed that day — but a great deal about what the work can now promise did.
For eleven years this was an initiative: water points, school support and direct help for families in Benin, paid for privately. That arrangement has a ceiling, and we reached it. An initiative cannot sign an agreement with a school, apply for public funding, issue a donation receipt, or promise a young person twelve months of language training and be held to that promise.
Registration brings obligations that we wanted: a Satzung, a board, a Mitgliederversammlung that can vote us out, accounts that have to add up, and a tax office that checks whether we are actually charitable. Those obligations are not bureaucracy. They are the reason a stranger can now take us seriously.
One thing we will carry for a while: eleven years of delivery with very little of it written down. We are collecting confirmations from the communities we worked with, and until those exist we publish no figures. An estimate we cannot evidence is worth less to us than an empty column.