"Nationality makes no difference"

Steinen. Dina Alessa from Syria and Lamin Colley from Gambia fled from their homelands in 2015 and 2014. Today, they’ve already been at H2O GmbH in Steinen for two years. Dina Alessa is successfully working in the laboratory and Lamin Colley is in the final stages of his training as an electronics engineer.

H2O GmbH is active internationally and brings together more than ten nations. “Every colleague makes an important contribution to our corporate culture and to the success of our company”, emphasises Bettina Böhringer, personnel officer at H2O GmbH. The company is proud of this. “It’s important to us that our employees are committed to their work with us. Nationality makes absolutely no difference.” Indeed, given the current lack of skilled professionals, H2O GmbH is delighted to have found such motivated and qualified employees.

 “I came to Germany in 2015”, relates Dina Alessa. The Syrian is qualified in agricultural science and used to work in Damascus for the Environment Ministry. She applied for a 6-month internship at H2O through the “Prospects for Refugees” initiative. Following this, she was offered an indefinite contract. Today she has already been working for more than two years in the company laboratory. “My training has enabled me to have a certain understanding of chemistry, my work is great fun. I feel good here, my colleagues are great.”

Lamin Colley also has lots of fun at work. He’s been in Germany since 2014 and completed his main school leaving certificate here. He arrived at the company through the training partnership between his football club Lörrach-Bromach and H2O GmbH. Here he first of all did his internship and began his training as an electronics engineer after his electronics technical college training 2017. “I’m grateful that I’ve been given this opportunity at H2O. I am very much at ease here, my colleagues are a great help, even for learning the language.”

Dina Alessa and Lamin Colley have, to a large extent, learned German themselves and today, thanks to daily contact with their colleagues, can communicate excellently. According to Böhringer, in this case there were no particular obstacles in employing refugees and adds: “There wasn’t any more red tape than there is for other staff recruitment. Dina and Lamin already had all the documentation we need in their possession. And, any queries which arise, are always resolved excellently by the immigration office in Lörrach. As such, I can only recommend this for any company.”