Refugees that come to Germany don’t feel like Germans, because the people here remind them about it all the time, thus they face not only a lot of obstacles, but daily discrimination and racism. This is not right, ¡We are all human, come on! We may have not the same skin or eyes color; it doesn’t matter if we speak different languages or eat different food, we all live in this planet. A hundred years ago there were no passports or bureaucracy and we were free to go to any part of the world.

I lived for two years in Texas, near the border with Mexico. Unlike the rest of the United States, the main language there is Spanish, so I had to learn to say “hola” quickly to survive. Many people helped me, and I really appreciated that. I think my motivation to help foreign people in my country is precisely that I was in the same difficult situation before.

I began giving German lessons to the refugees who were arriving to the country. The first thing I did was to go to the library and ask for a space that we needed to see classes. Luckily, they gave us a room and we made the first of these meetings. We started with fifteen people and one location, and three years later, we are more than a hundred teachers in sixteen locations. We’ve created a great community among contributors and students, we also do all sorts of activities with them; cook, eat, dance, skateboard and even go to job interviews with them… ¡It’s fantastic!

I’ve met a lot of people from Afghanistan and Syria there. One of them was seventeen when we started, he said that he wanted to learn with us. Now he is twenty, legally European and is teaching German to people from his country, he’s amazing. 

I’m sure that every person who is part of our classes wants to make a difference, either in their life, their family or someone else’s. My goal is not only to help people establish in Germany, but also motivate them to help others from their countries, because, who better than immigrants to help other immigrants? They’ve been through the same experience and they can have more empathy between them. 

In the end, what I want the most is to make this program bigger and better, so this little piece of good goes on.