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Mercedes-Benz Is Positive About the Refugee Situation, Launches Internship Program

Germany, as the well-developed country that it is - and that’s an euphemism -, has a duty to actively help solve the delicate problem of the refugees by finding ways to integrate them into the German society.
Mercedes-Benz internship programs for refugees 1 photo
Photo: Mercedes-Benz
Since Daimler AG is one of the largest private companies in Germany, it obviously could not have turned a blind eye to this whole situation. That’s exactly why Daimler, in cooperation with the German Federal Employment Agency, is launching an internship program starting this November.

About 40 refugees will be starting a fourteen-week “bridge internship” at the Mercedes-Benz Plant in Stuttgart. Apart from learning basic technical skills that will ease their future employment in the industrial field, the participants will also attend daily German language classes.

The fact that the program has the backing of the German Federal Employment Agency and the Stuttgart Job Center only comes to increase the chances of actually finding a job once the three and a half months have passed.

This is just a pilot program, the aim being to offer such internships at many other Mercedes-Benz plants across Germany in the coming months. All in all, it is expected that several hundred people will benefit from such qualification programs. The graduates will be referred to other companies or will begin to search for work with the help of employment agencies.

They're not saying it, but....

It’s not unimaginable that some of those attending these “bridge internships” will end up working for Daimler, but the company is probably refraining itself from making such promises so that people don’t start off with false hopes.

The extent of Daimler’s implication in the refugee problem goes even further than these professional integration programs. Besides offering a “helpers’ fleet” of vehicles to relief organization, it also made financial donations to the newly implemented nationwide campaigns offering German courses or food to the refugees.

And it’s not just the company itself doing all the work, but its employees as well. They volunteer for activities such as housing renovations or building children’s playgrounds.

And if you think this is just a new preoccupation for the Stuttgart-based firm in order to get some positive publicity, you’re wrong. Daimler has been working with “Wings of Help” since 2013 by sending supplies to Syrian refugee camps in Turkey and northern Iraq.

In the end, it doesn’t even matter if Daimler is doing all this just to get some attention, or because somebody there actually feels it’s the least the company can do. It all comes down to the actual effect of their actions, and that’s a positive one. Let’s just hope other major companies will follow the example shortly.
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About the author: Vlad Mitrache
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"Boy meets car, boy loves car, boy gets journalism degree and starts job writing and editing at a car magazine" - 5/5. (Vlad Mitrache if he was a movie)
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