Lufthansa Group’s help alliance and Kiron Open Higher Education open study center for refugees in Berlin

A meeting place and study center for refugee students
Lufthansa help students achieve social and cultural integration

Cologne, Germany, 2017-Jan-31 — /Travel PR News/ — Education is one of the key factors for the successful and long-term integration of people of non-German origin. This is why help alliance, the relief organization of the Lufthansa Group, gives targeted support to projects in Germany with this as their focus.

Today, in cooperation with the education platform Kiron Open Higher Education, the study center for refugees opened its doors in Berlin’s “Spreewerkstätten” cultural center. The meeting place and study center was financed by the help alliance. The study center complements Kiron’s online educational offerings and is embedded in the concept of the Migration Hub Berlin (the global network for asylum, migration, and refugee cooperation).

In addition, mentors from among the Lufthansa Group’s staff assist the students and so help contribute to their social and cultural integration.

Joachim Steinbach, Managing Director of help alliance, says: “With the opening of the study center and the support of mentors from the Lufthansa Group, help alliance, together with Kiron, is helping to support refugees in Berlin, even beyond the options offered online. Because, besides learning the material covered by a course of studies, education consists above all of personal encounters, of talking to other people. Only here do we have a chance to build bridges and become familiar with the society we are in so that we can become part of it.”

Vincent Zimmer, Kiron Co-Founder, added: “We are very pleased that, with the assistance of help alliance, we are opening a new study center in the Migration Hub. By doing so, we are offering our Berlin students a space for encounters, exchanges and education. In particular, the learning mentors of the Lufthansa Group strengthen intercultural and professional competences on both sides. Such offline offers are important so that our students can achieve successful learning results, but also have a social point of contact. Strong partners such as help alliance allow Kiron to offer high-quality complementary services in as many locations as possible.”

About help alliance
As an internationally active group and part of the German and international community, the Lufthansa Group assumes responsibility for current social challenges that go beyond its actual business activities. This is done through its charitable organization help alliance. “Closer to the world. Closer to its people.” This is the mission statement of the socially committed employees of the Lufthansa Group. Under the umbrella of help alliance, around forty aid initiatives are being supported all over the world, providing young people with access to education and enabling them to lead a self-determined life. The projects are financed exclusively through donations. For each project, employees bear responsibility on a voluntary basis, and always in cooperation with competent local partners with many years’ experience in development cooperation. In its work, help alliance can rely on the power of the Lufthansa Group: Be it flight services, transport capacities, expertise or the global commitment and network of around 120,000 employees. And most importantly of all, your donation goes exactly where it is urgently needed – safely and quickly. More information, go to www.helpalliance.org

About Kiron Open Higher Education
The social start-up Kiron Open Higher Education was founded by Vincent Zimmer and Markus Kressler in 2015. Kiron is the world’s first educational platform that provides refugees with unbureaucratic access to higher education. The innovative online and offline education model consists of an average of two years of online study and a two-year course of study at a partner university. In addition, Kiron offers student services such as physical learning centers, study centers, and buddy and mentoring programs. The supplementary offers are intended to assist the students over the course of their online studies. The goal is that the students can integrate into the respective host country through higher education, both in the social as well as in the economic sense, and find a way back to a self-determined life.
For more information, visit our website at www.kiron.ngo or follow Kiron on Twitter and Facebook.

SOURCE: Lufthansa Newsroom

MEDIA CONTACTS:

Deutsche Lufthansa AG
Wolfgang Weber
T +49 69 696 – 2999 / -33776
lufthansa-group@dlh.de

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