LEA stands for performance – commitment – appreciation. The Medium-Sized Company Award which is awarded in Baden-Wuerttemberg honours projects and company commitment going beyond the actual business activity. This year the renowned prize was awarded to the Ludwigsburg test institute of managing director Dirk Zedler. At their own charge they had furnished a bicycle workshop for teenagers from a disadvantaged social background at Uhlandschule in Marbach.
Once a week Bernd Romhard, one of the master mechanics cycle craft from the Zedler Institute, provides to the teenagers practical insights in promising technologies. During the award ceremony this sustainable project was praised as "lighthouse project" by laudatory Sarah Pawlowski from the German Federation of Trade Unions (DGB), region Baden-Wuerttemberg. With this education partnership comprising three different school types – including one school for children with special needs – the service provider was successful among 258 applications handed in in the category "staff of 20 and less" and was awarded by the jury. "There were so many fantastic projects among the nominees. We were really surprised and are very proud at the same time that the prize was awarded to us for our commitment to the bicycle issue and the youth," says Dirk Zedler happily.
Author: Thomas Geisler