It is heartbreaking when you have such a happy 16-year-old girl on the phone as Elenya K. Since she had to flee Syria to Munich with her family in 2016, she has been diligently learning German at school. She is therefore a great help to her parents, even when the reporter asks for an interview. This is where you start chatting.
She enthusiastically reports on her internship with a beautician, which she has just completed. “I really enjoyed it,” says Elenya. She was given a pseudonym for this story, because it’s about need – and even if, like Elenya’s family, you lost everything through no fault of your own in the terrible civil war and had to leave your homeland, for most of the refugees it is associated with great shame , To ask for help.
Elenya, for example, has to prepare for her school-leaving certificate, for which she needs a laptop – also to write applications for an apprenticeship on it afterwards. She can imagine that in a social profession, for example. “I did an internship at Caritas before I went to the beauty salon,” reports the 16-year-old. In a refugee home, she played with children and did homework with them. “It was good work,” she says.
For her father, Rashid K., who works as a driver for a transport service for the disabled and receives top-up benefits to keep the family afloat, a laptop is unaffordable. His difficult financial situation reminds him again and again how great the emotional loss of home is, but also the material losses, writes his supervisor in the social department. But it was not just the flight alone that put a heavy strain on the family’s life. Arriving in Germany tore her apart.
The K.’s were initially accommodated in a homeless boarding house, a situation that the mother, traumatized by the flight, could not endure. She left the family, met a new partner and had a child with him, a little boy who is now three years old. For Elena and her now ten-year-old sister, this was the next shock in their young lives. At least it was possible to accommodate the suddenly single father and his two daughters in a KomProB facility. The abbreviation stands for “Municipal Housing Program”, with which the city of Munich supplements the social housing funded by the federal and state governments. The offer is aimed at people who could not pay for social housing either. “Housing instead of accommodation” is the goal, because instead of rooms or beds in emergency quarters, permanent living space should be made available. “We are very grateful for that,” says K.
But the greatest happiness for his two daughters is that their mother has recently returned to the family and the parents have been reconciled. The small apartment, which is actually only designed for three people, has gotten a bit cramped, but Rashid K. would never complain about that, because the most important thing for him is to see the children grow up safely. This now also includes his wife’s son, whom he welcomed with open arms. However, the three-year-old is slowly getting too big to continue sleeping with his parents. “It would be nice if he had his own bed,” says Rashid K. Elenya and her sister also want bikes so they can explore the city with their friends. And last but not least, it would be the greatest joy for the K.’s to take a trip together, for example to a fairytale park, so that they could spend a carefree day as a family.
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