Writing letters in the 21th century? Openness, tolerance, acceptance, equality? Is this all out?

No! Of course not.

You showed us that all of that is still very much a topic today.

A topic about which you care.

"Having Emma 'come out' in front of the school meant the world to us and I KNOW it helps in our long march toward equality," one of you said to us lately, and we can just agree.

Emma coming out meant the world to us, it meant the world to her and her actions had surely a lot of repercussions that we don't even know about and that never have been shown to us ( more than a dumb painting on a locker - no matter how artistic ;D ), but that were surely there in the Pestalozzi world and all around - people talking about it, gossiping about it, sharing the event and thus expanding their horizons and being made aware that there's so much more out there in this world that they don't even know about - hidden because of the fear of what will happen if they did know.

And that's what this is all about.

The actions to change that.

No matter how little or big - if it's getting up on the Coming Out Monument to kiss, if it's just holding hands in the streets, just voicing a gay-friendly opinion or doing a 'silly' little thing for a project of a 'silly little fanpage' of a 'silly little german soap'. No matter what, it are these actions that make people go 'Oh', that make people aware and wonder, and introduce them to new or foreign things that they've eventually heard of but never been in touch with, never have experienced themselves before.

So why exactly are these actions so important?

Because an action always causes a reaction.

People will react. Not always nicely. But they will react. They will be influenced. It will make them think and talk and thus it's making the topic at hand to something that matters. To not only us. But to them, too. And that's what we want, isn't it?

- Make it matter.

Because if there's more than you, more than one-little-person-you who this matters to, then it's actually becoming real. And the more people there are to whom it matters, the more real it becomes to the whole world. With all of these actions you are making you, your relationship, your way to live and love become visible and real. By having send in a picture or video here you are making it visible that 1) love is love and we love it, and 2) this little silly soap mattered, too.

Jemma mattered.

A lot.

To a lot of people.

Because it was ONE way to make homosexuality also only being love, visible.

And now look at what that has done. Look at what this little silly soap has done in one year, even though it's not even being on the air anymore! Look at all the friendships and connections, the happiness, laughter and creativity that has spread from it, and look at all the people who have found themselves in Jemma. Who have found a way to themselves. Who have found the strength to actually come out.

Look at all the change, look at all these repercussions!

Sat1 might not know it, but it has done a tremendous job with having let Petra Bodenbach and Team create this story, and with every comment of you, every 'Like', every entry you send in, you have shown them how well they have and what it means.

So let's keep on doing that.

To show them that we appreciate it and want more of that kind of visibility on our TV.

Because it's all a chain of events, always starting at the first step: Making something visible - by acting and making it matter!

This was our way of contributing to visibility and trying to do something, and we want to thank all of you for your contributions, your support and your feedback to this project. Because it really mattered to us. Especially because there really is no 'just' or 'silly' in it. Everything counts.

Some of you didn't know how to realise their thoughts and ideas and make them into a visual contribution, but alone that you thought about it and were concerned with it shows how important this topic really is - generally and for you.

So, keep going, point the way, take a stand and raise your voice.

- Stay Jemma.

Because after all 'love is only love' and Jemma is Love and Love is Jemma.  

[And this, too, was a quote from one of you (and Miss Scherer)]

You rocked this idea in so many ways that we threw our original plan about making a video out of all of your contributions overboard. Because we think that every contribution deserves to stand and speak alone.

Also we passed on commenting and describing the different contributions here out of the same reason. They should speak for themselves and we do not want to influence your decisions. After all, we want to know your opinion. Not ours.

For the time being we put the videos that you contributed on our own channel - you only have to click the respective picture and you'll be transfered to them. To see the contributed pics and their titles, you only have to click on them to enlarge them.

So, as usual: click, click, click! - (Hach, isn't clicking a beautiful thing ;D ) 

You can vote for your favorite entry every day, and yes, you can vote for different ones each day. 

Also to keep reminding you about that and giving every entry the chance of a proper seperate viewing and consideration we will do a "Visibility Matters Project - Entry of the Day"-post of the different entries every day. The order in which the entries will be introduced is completely random and will be drawn by lot.

Good. Having said all that, let's start the viewing of the participants :)

(The poll you'll find on the bottom of this page)

Ihr habt das ganze so gerockt, dass wir vom ursprünglich angedachten Konzept abgekommen sind, aus euren Beiträgen ein Video zu schneiden. Jeder Beitrag hat es einfach verdient für sich zu stehen!

Wir haben aus dem gleichen Grund auch darauf verzichtet, die einzelnen Beiträge groß zu beschreiben. Die Beiträge sollen für sich sprechen und wir wollen eure Entscheidungen in keiner Richtung beeeinflussen. Schließlich wollen wir eure Meinung, nicht unsere.

Die Videos haben wir für den Zeitraum des Votings auf unseren eigenen Kanal geladen. Einfach das jeweilige Pic anklicken und ihr seit gleich beim Video. Bei den Bildern nur klicken , hach wie schön ist klicken :), und es öffnet sich eine Bildgalerie mit Großansicht.

Abstimmen könnt ihr jeden Tag, und jap, ihr könnt auch mehrere Favoriten haben und jeden Tag für jemand anderes Stimmen.

Um das Thema und die Abstimmung in euren und unser allen Köpfen zu behalten werden wir außerdem jeden Tag einem der Beiträge besondere Aufmerksamkeit schenken indem wir einen "Visibility Matters Projekt - Beitrag des Tages'-post auf Fb rausbringen werden. Die Reihenfolge in der die Beiträge euch dort nochmals vorgestellt werden ist komplett zufällig und wird ausgelost.

Guut. Lange Anrede, los gehts. Hier sind die Teilnehmer :)

(Den Wahlbogen selbst gibt's ganz unten auf der Seite)

In a seperate campaign we asked you to snap pictures of the Jemma Flower Power sheets to give you another chance to participate and win one of the prizes. -  Yes, on these sheets the opinions tend to differ. But everyone has to admit that visiting Ikea, a smile will light up your face at their sight. After all we will all agree that the scenes in which they played a main role have made us completely 'verhacht' (enchanted), turning them into something very special - to Jemma and us. So we decided they should be given an extra chance to show themselves off and be visible here, too. ;)

Beneath you'll first find all entries again before there are the winning final two from the Facebook campaigne for which you'll be able to vote (seperately).

In einer seperaten Aktion haben wir euch gebeten Fotos von der Jemma-Blümchenbettdecke zu schießen und haben euch damit die Chance geboten bei unserem kleinen Wettbewerb teilzunehmen und eventuell einen der vielen Preise zu gewinnen. - Ja, an dieser Bettwäsche scheiden sich wirklich die Geister. Aber zugeben muss wohl jeder, dass sich beim Ikea Besuch ein Lächeln ins Gesicht schlich, beim Anblick dieser Blümchen. Und am Ende sind wir uns alle einig - die Szenen, bei denen sie eine Hauptrolle hatten, haben uns alle verhacht und diese Bettwäsche zu was ganz besonderem gemacht. Deshalb dachten wir, dass ihr hier nochmals die Möglichkeit geboten werden sollte sich zu präsentieren und sichtbar zu machen ;)

 Zunächst findet Ihr alle Teilnehmer, dann extra die 2 Gewinner der Facebook Aktion, für die ihr auch voten könnt.

Thanks for sending these in and to all of you who participated in the voting!

Here are our two flowery finalists of the facebook-campaign:

Danke für die Einsendungen und an alle die fleißig gevotet haben!

Hier haben wir unsere zwei blümchenhaften Finalisten der Facebookaktion:

So here we go - Vote now! :)

Also los geht's - Wählt jetzt! :)

Closed......voting is finished.

Again this is not easy. But this time it's really not just us who have made it that way ;D

Thanks for all the great contributions once again! We hope you'll be having fun with this!

The winners will be published at the 15.08.2012

- Your JI Team

Wiedermal ist es nicht einfach, aber diesmal sind es wirklich nicht nur wir schuld!

Danke nochmals für eure tollen Beiträge! Wir hoffen ihr habt Spaß damit!

Die Gewinner werden am 15.08.2012 veröffentlicht.

- Euer JI Team