Mayor Thomas Kerkhoff praises Shopmacher for integration

Loai Kahel from Syria contributes his digital expertise to the Shopmacher.

Loai Kahel and André Roitzsch in conversation with Mayor Thomas Kerkhoff.

There is a lot of public talk about the integration of refugees. Unfortunately, large corporations have all too often failed to meet their publicly effective announcements in their commitments regarding the employment of people who have fled to us from war and violence.

At the digital agency Shopmacher here in Gescher, on the other hand, things are traded. Loai Kahel (25), born in Syria and fleeing the war from there, has been working as a frontend developer for the Shopmacher since February – this is a job that requires extensive IT knowledge.

Shopmacher CEO André Roitzsch: “Loai has acquired remarkably good programming skills in the past two years that he has been in Germany. That’s great. So we didn’t hesitate to hire Loai and offer him a future career.

The fact that Loai currently speaks less German than English is not so important in our team, since the international developer language is English. Nevertheless, of course we support Loai with his German courses in order to promote his private integration as much as possible. His colleagues already see him as a real Shopmacher anyway.”

“I can only congratulate and thank the Shopmachers for the professional and team-internal integration of Loai Kahel,” says Mayor Thomas Kerkhoff. “It is really remarkable and indicative of the openness of our city that integration works so well here in Gescher, both professionally and socially.”

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