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Video portrait series - Our migrant companies

Episode 1, Kristina Beliaeva (Podiatrist)

This is Kristina. She made it from a € 450 job to a successful entrepreneur. Check out her success story here!

Episode 3, Mahmoud Al Eshat (Al Jasmin Fast Food Restaurant)

Mahmoud came from Syria to Germany in November 2015. He wanted to bring something from his home country to Germany and opened the Arabic restaurant AlJasmin in Frankfurt (Oder). Together with Bollmann and partners , we were able to help him find new employees and get a new loan. In the video portrait Mahmoud gives us an insight into his future plans.

Episode 6, Tatiana Stancev (Health-food shop "BiO & Bewusstsein" in Perleberg)

Tatiana came to Germany in 2015. On the spur of the moment, she opened a health food store in Perleberg because there wasn't anything like it there yet. In the initial phase, she supported the consultant Regine Meine from the IQ project. Together they applied for a microloan from the job center, which they could use to purchase the equipment for the store. She says of her advisor: “The care is over, but I'm still in good contact with Ms. Meine. The shop is going great ... thanks to her too. "

Episode 8, Klara Rybnikarova (Tiny Houses)

Klara has been a fan of circus wagons and tiny houses for a long time. Hobby and passion became profession. So she went into business for herself and founded KR Tiny Homes. Her vision: produce in a sustainable, environmentally friendly and resource-saving way. In order to be able to finance new material, she receives support from the IQ project when applying for a loan. Do you think the tiny house is just as beautiful as we do? You can see it in the video.

Episode 2, Maria Mazerat-Khaikin (Art Therapist)

As an art therapist, Maria cares for people of all ages. These include autistic children also. Find out how she came from Saint-Petersburg to Germany and why she started her own business.

Episode 5, Natalia Nalezinska (Voice & presentation training)

Natalia studied psychology and opera singing in her home country Poland and has been in Germany since 2012. It offers singing sessions, voice and presentation training. On site in Potsdam she creates the space for the voice so that it shows itself as it is. Natalia has discovered her vocation. In her work she connects the soul and emotions with the body and voice. Because of Corona, she had to switch her offer to online. She says about the IQ project: "... to have support and to get this security, that is invaluable."

Episode 7, Majid Pakniyat (Inventor)

Majid and his wife came to Germany in 2017 as engineers from Iran. In 2018 they started their own business with an invention. You can see in the video what exactly they invented and how the IQ project: qualification of migrant entrepreneurs was able to help.

Diversity day

Diversity day 2019

The video tells two success stories of migrant companies that Social Impact has accompanied on their way:

Murhaf (26) fled Syria with his family in 2011 and opened a shop for Arabic food in 2016. The IQ project "qualification of migrant entrepreneurs" supported him in the further development of his marketing and sales.

Gosia (50) came from Poland to Germany in 2012 and was able to realize her dream of having her own fashion studio. The project "Guidance Service for Migrants" helped her to write the business plan in order to get funding for her studio. Further information on the "guidance service for migrants": https://lotsendienst.socialimpact.eu/

Diversity day 2021

The Social Impact gGmbH is not only a signatory to the network of the Charta für Vielfalt e.V.: we are tolerant, colorful and diverse. We want to make this visible together with our workforce. Our colleagues from different origins, individual personalities, lifestyles and perspectives work on the visions of social impact in numerous national and international projects. This year we will introduce our colleagues and use the Diversity Day to deal more consciously than ever with our corporate diversity. As the initiator of the campaign, the IQ sub-project “Qualification for migrant companies”, located in the Social Impact Lab Potsdam, is just one of our numerous projects. Our corporate diversity will find a place on our social media channels as part of # DDT21, which will be designed into "Social Impact" using a KAWA.

Diversity day 2020

With our contribution to this year's Diversity Month of Social Impact, we showed our example of #FlagforDiversity from our migrant companies.

The Social Impact Diversity Month was launched by this project throughout May 2020. We showed examples from many of our Germany-wide inclusive entrepreneurship programs run by Social Impact gGmbH.

We are also pleased to be able to show a portrait of one of our entrepreneurs at #DDT20:

Entrepreneur Yichun Wang also wants to bring Chinese culture closer to her participants in her calligraphy courses. In order to better understand the differences between German and Chinese culture, Yichun took part in our intercultural seminar "Typically German". In the video, she tells how that helped her.