Everyone knows the Sternsinger (Epiphany carol singers). Every year around Epiphany, on 6 January, many families receive a visit from them. Children dressed as the Three Wise Men from the East — Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar — go from house to house, sing carols, write the New Year’s blessing above doorways and collect donations. And quite a sum is raised: over 50 million euros every year. It is a campaign unique in the world, in which children take action for children in need in the Global South, so that their lives may improve. The funds support children in many ways: enabling them to attend school, informing them about their rights, or protecting them from exploitative and dangerous working conditions, to name just a few examples.
The donations are managed in Aachen, where the Sternsinger organisation is based. For some time now, the organisation has been committed to an impact-oriented funding policy. This means that project proposal applications do not merely list planned activities and the resulting outputs, and instead place the emphasis on the resulting impacts.
To help strengthen this focus on impact, CEval is supporting the Sternsinger on a pro bono basis. Following several workshops in Aachen, a seminar now took place for the first time in Bangkok from 11 to 15 May 2026. Led by Prof. Dr Reinhard Stockmann, it brought together 25 participants from nine Southeast Asian countries. In the seminar, participants learned to think in terms of the substantive changes, or impacts, they seek to achieve in order to contribute to solving the identified problems. The work was not only highly focused, but also marked by great joy, commitment and genuine dedication, so that the money collected each year by the young carol singers can be used even more effectively.
