First and foremost, my family is my life. But my work, too, contributes a lot to the fact that I am very happy with it“, Asmaa Mohammed Ibrahim confidently states. The 33-year-old engineer is working at Mizan, SEKEMs company dedicated to the production of seedlings to spread organic agriculture in the country. At the plant, she works as a Head of Department in the field of plant breeding. Depending on the season, she is responsible for ten to 30 staff members.
Asmaa is a very cheerful woman with a strikingly positive aura. She studied agriculture at the University of Zagazig, the capital of the administrative region in which also the SEKEM farm is situated. Since 2007 she has been working for Mizan. She started out as an assistant to a farm manager who had brought her on board the SEKEM company because of her exceptional motivation and reliability. „I want to grow professionally. While it is nice to be in a position where you feel safe and have a regular work routine, I always want to learn something new. I have the ambition to be the best in my field of professional responsibility.”
Asmaa is married and a mother of two sons. After the birth of her first child, the SEKEM coworker took a maternity leave of two years. It was then that she noticed how important it was for her to work: „I have indeed enjoyed being able to put all my energy into my children, but I noticed that I missed something. My job gives me the opportunity to fully realize myself and that boosts my self-esteem. It is certainly not easy to have a full-time job and to be a mother at the same time, Yet, I am much happier this way.”
SEKEMs child care facilities are a substantial help to her and many fellow women coworkers at the initiative. Asmaa brings her children to the care centre on the SEKEM farm in the morning and fetches them again in the afternoon on her way home. „I am grateful to know that our children are in good hands at the centre while I pursue my profession. It is especially important to me that they receive the holistic education that SEKEM offers them”, she adds. „The importance of such a education – that is what I try to convey them.“
The development of her children currently has the highest priority for the sympathetic coworker from Mizan. „I also wish to convey to them that it is not at all important to attain a high rank in life, but to always give the best you can at the point in the world where you are.”
It is also the holistic view of man and nature that Asmaa Mohammed particularly enjoys with regard to her work environment at Mizan. Moreover, Asmaa loves the general atmosphere at the SEKEM enterprise and the great care its staff takes for its natural environment:
„When I set foot on the clean grounds of our company every morning and see the countless blooming flowers and the blossoming trees, I feel so well. This atmosphere certainly positively influences the way I work”.
Christine Arlt