Maria Möller and Laura Mohn created a historic moment at DHDL with their start-up “talking hands”. The jurors didn't get involved as investors, but Judith, Carsten Maschmeyer, Georg Kofler and Dagmar Wöhrl each donated 10,000 euros to them. What is behind your business idea that gave you goosebumps? We met the two founders.

Maria: In short, with “talking hands” we want to make a contribution to inclusion: that children with learning difficulties are not excluded from society and that children with and without disabilities understand each other better in the truest sense of the word. Our means is gesture. We produced a set of 100 flip books for this purpose. Each one shows a word such as “ball”, “mom” or “love”. The children learn signs in a playful way.

Laura: We both studied communication design and the flip books were my thesis. I then gave the set to a daycare center and the feedback was so huge that word quickly spread and other daycare centers also registered a need. I then founded “talking hands” together with Maria. We both do it full time and still have big plans. We have just launched an app with which you can learn signs. (Editor's note: see info box)

Laura: Yes, my sister has Down syndrome and learned to speak later than other children. At home we always communicated with her using signs, which worked really well.

Laura: A 4 minus, I think. Other countries are so much further along! In the USA, for example, it is normal for almost all children to learn signs in elementary school. And in Europe, for example, Holland is at the forefront.

Laura: There are often reservations on the part of kindergarten teachers because they primarily associate inclusion with more work. However, this can be remedied if the state provides the money and equips a daycare center so that children in wheelchairs can also attend, for example.

Maria: And the parents of children without disabilities are often worried that their children will learn less if children with disabilities are in the group. But the opposite is the case: We see that their social behavior is being trained much more: these children are considerate of others, are empathetic and include everyone. Children have no inhibitions when it comes to dealing with people with disabilities anyway – adults are more likely to do so.

Maria: We could understand the reasoning because nobody had contacts in the educational world. That's why they couldn't have helped us the way they do with other start-ups - where, for example, it's about getting into retail.

Laura: We were even more pleased about the generous donation. That was crazy! Judith came back to us after the recording and said how great she thought our project was. That was really sweet! She also offered us a video call in which she gave us tips on building a brand. We'll definitely tackle that soon.

Each “lion” has ordered flip books worth 10,000 euros from us and is donating them to daycare centers. 16,000 flip books were distributed to children. With this huge order behind us, we were also able to produce a total of 120,000 flip books. “The Lion’s Den” has ignited the turbo for us!