Hello everyone, my name is Ramon and I am a Senior Consultant based in our Frankfurt office. As part of the Operations team, I focus on production and sustainability topics, mainly with automotive clients across Europe.

I started playing table tennis when I was five years old. Today, I am still an active player and I am the vice-president of my home club near Frankfurt. Having experienced the joy that table tennis brings to people of all age groups, I wanted to support a non-profit organization that uses table tennis to promote social values. This is why I applied for the Roland Berger Social Fellowship program.

During my three-month Social Fellowship, I was given the opportunity to support the ITTF Foundation. As part of the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF), the Foundation is using table tennis as a tool for development in fields such as diversity, inclusion, and sustainability. It is their mission to bring people of all ages, irrespective of gender, culture, social background, or physical ability together to play table tennis. This objective is achieved by supporting or implementing local projects all over the world, making table tennis popular and universal.

The flagship project of the ITTF Foundation is World Table Tennis Day (WTTD), which is celebrated annually all over the world, with more than 800 registered events in 2024. I had the pleasure of supporting the large African continental celebration, which took place in Casablanca, Morocco in 2024.

Upon arrival in Morocco, I was warmly welcomed by the African Table Tennis President (from Egypt), the Moroccan Table Tennis President, and the well-known table tennis coach and instructor Mohammed Gharib. Together, we organized the two-day celebration, which involved visiting and preparing the venues, printing T-shirts and banners, and promoting the event. The subsequent celebrations in a local sports hall on Saturday and at the beach in Casablanca on Sunday were a great success! It was amazing to witness the joy of all the participants and the connections that were formed.

After the celebrations, I visited local clubs to promote the values of World Table Tennis Day in their everyday activities. Moroccan television was present during these visits and aired reports about the events (and I found myself in demand as an interview partner, with my interviews then translated or subtitled into Arabic). Of course, I supported the ITTF Foundation in documenting the celebrations as well, also focusing on strategic and operational improvements for next year.

After World Table Tennis Day, I helped the ITTF Foundation create a manual for table tennis training for use with neurodegenerative diseases (dementia, Parkinson’s, multiple sclerosis). People with these diseases require special communication and individual training methods. When applied correctly, table tennis can effectively help fight the symptoms of these diseases.

Meeting people that share the same passion as me, promoting diversity and inclusion, experiencing different cultures, and doing so in combination with the sport I love, was a great episode in my life and one I would not have missed for anything. Overall, I am very grateful for this unique experience I had with the ITTF Foundation.