Today marks the end of Anti-Bullying Week, which this year focused on the theme ‘United Against Bullying’. Our Odd Socks Day on Tuesday was a very useful reminder that we are all different and that this should be celebrated. The older I get the more I realise how true this is, and that the world is a more interesting, fun and creative place because of the diversity that exists.
My school assembly on Tuesday linked two contemporary topics: Anti-Bullying Week and the very encouraging news of the first potential vaccine for Covid-19, developed by BionTech in association with Pfizer. As I explained to the boys, BionTech is led by the married couple Ugar Saahin and Ozlem Tureci, both of whose parents came to Germany as part of the Gastarbeiterprogramm (Guest Worker Programme), a bi-lateral agreement between Turkey and West Germany to ease labour shortages (caused partly as a result of the cessation of economic migrants with the construction of the Berlin Wall).
Life was not easy for many Gastarbeiter families, who often faced daily discrimination, found life tough and were not expected to have permanent residence in Germany. For Ugar Saahin and Ozlem Tureci, this must have been a very difficult environment in which to grow up, being part of a society in which they were on the outside looking in. Their story is one of extraordinary resilience and hard work, and of the different and valuable contributions that everyone makes to society, even if Saahin and Tureci’s is likely to be more significant than most!
An entertaining footnote to their story is the address of BionTech’s head office in Mainz, which is 12 An der Goldgrube. This translates as “At the Goldmine”. I think all of us will be delighted that BionTech has indeed uncovered a goldmine, but everything I have read about the founding couple suggests that they are motivated first and foremost by the science and making the world a better place. I’m sure there’s another assembly in there somewhere! To learn more about the couple click on the link which takes you to BBC Radio 4’s fifteen minute “Profile”. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000pdrk