United in diversity and tolerance

Talking about diversity!

Have you ever read a slogan and thought it describes the core of your existence perfectly? 'United in Diversity' was the slogan of Life Ball and could not have been a better match. Life Ball is an astounding charity project to help fight HIV and prejudices in society.

Throughout the years it had grown to be one of Vienna's most renown annual events. Celebrating diversity and tolerance. We have been supporting this amazing event through a collaboration as accommodation sponsor since 2013.

Back then Chris was the manager of wombat's THE BASE in Vienna and also volunteered at the Life Ball. Furthermore there was always a good crowd of wombat's staff volunteering or just partying at the Life Ball. No wonder the idea of this collaboration was welcomed with open arms and actually felt like a thing we had to do anyway.

A core connection

A couple of month ago Gerry Kessler announced that this year would be the last Life Ball. It made us recap the last years and we asked ourselves why we actually never really saw this collaboration as a Marketing gig and didn't brag about this sponsorship.

And there's the loop back to the slogan. There's not much of an obvious connection between a charity event with tickets from € 80.- and a hostel. Maybe apart from hostellers hardly ever missing out on a good party.

However, we are indeed united in diversity. Diversity is vital for an open society and it's in the nature of a hostel. Without tolerance and people who embrace diversity, hostel life would just not be possible.

In a hostel you share pretty much everything with travellers from all around the world. No matter what their cultural background is, whom they love or what their lifestyle is. It's unfiltered, random and beautiful.

Celebrate diversity

We were lucky enough to share Vienna, our home town with an event like Life Ball. Nevertheless at wombat's we celebrate diversity and tolerance wherever we can. There's always a crowd of staff members, ex-staff members and friends of wombat's who celebrate pride parades, like Regenbogenparade in Vienna, Christopher Street Day in Berlin, the pride in London and other wombat's destinations.

A good bunch of our staff gets unbelievably excited about these events. It's more than a LGBT+ thing. It's about celebrating the freedom to be who you are and love who you love.

For us at wombat's tolerance and diversity are just natural. That's why we usually don't make a lot of fuzz about mentioning it. But maybe we should actually stress our point of view more often?

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LIFE BALL 2019

Interview with CHRIS (Head of Innovations & Project Management)

Beautiful slogan for the very last LIFE BALL, it has been a “Beacon of Hope”, an instrument for help during the last 27 years.  It´s been so great to be a part of it. I´ve been working during 10 years, wombat´s has been a partner for 6 years. We gladly cooperated with the LIFE BALL this last years to help a beautiful cause.

The essence of LIFE BALL is THE FIGHT AGAINST AIDS, promoting diversity and tolerance, for people from all over the world, with no exceptions, from all beliefs, all sexualities. It´s been a pleasure and a big honour working with them on that cause.

UNITED IN DIVERSITY

That phrase brings everything back to the beginning, when LIFE BALL started bringing together people that were affected directly by the terrible illness of AIDS and brought them together with people who didn´t know, had no information, were not part of the gay community, did not have friends infected by AIDS and just spread the word about this awful disease, by now, AIDS is world ´known, we are on the best on defeating it, but it is very important we keep up this work, spreading information around the world. The disease is still not curable, just treatable.

I´m very proud that wombat´s CITY HOSTELS is a company where I feel very comfortable at, a place that promotes this year´s motto of the LIFE BALL, United in Diversity, on daily basis, because if you look at our staff or our guests, you really see diversity as a mainframe of the company.

Diversity; at wombat´s isn´t something you just talk about. It is something that we live, not something special, it´s what we do!