Meet the team: Today more about Amila

Amila is our new social impact community manager and therefore the new face of customer and employee happiness at Valeriana. We’re already super excited to work with Amila on making Valeriana thrive even more. In that sense: welcome to the team, A...

Our biggest sewing order yet

Ho – ho – ho! Did anyone ask for a high-speed record? Just before Christmas, we had the opportunity to work on an exciting project for our customer Alpinamed. The order: 200 fabric bags plus 200 elastic bands with the Alpinamed logo as Christmas g...

This is how you celebrate Christmas in Eritrea

Merry Christmas! Huh? Again? Already? Yes, again — or perhaps “just now”. Because for some religious communities in the world, Christmas is celebrated today, and this includes Eritrea. Since a good chunk of our employees is originally from Eritrea...

Corporate social community event hosted by Valeriana – live baking & punch

At the beginning of December, our Valeriana client Sylwia came to us with an exciting proposition. The world-famous tech company she works for was planning a virtual Christmas party for its employees and was looking for a host.

In conversation with the head of Zurich’s Integration Office

“In a city like Zurich, there are very few people who were actually born here. Almost everyone has moved here, some from a neighbouring town, others from a completely different continent.” Christof Meier, Head of the Integration Office of the Ci...

Every face has a story: Embaba’s success story

Embaba first came to Switzerland around four years ago and has now been with Valeriana for almost two of those years. She has basically been there since the very beginning and has become an integral part of our team. That is why we think that it’s...

Making Christmas biscuits with the Valeriana community

This year’s Christmas features not only tasty treats but also Eritrean coffee and Ethiopian Christmas music! Well, at least that’s the case when we invite our staff for a Christmas Valeriana bake-off, as we did last Sunday at the GZ Buchegg commun...

Giving and taking: the psychology of gift-giving

Big or small, store-bought or homemade? All that matters is that it’s from the heart! Christmas time is also the time of giving, and every time you give a gift to someone else, you also give one to yourself: the gift of serotonin!

In conversation with Bea Schwager of SPAZ

It was a hot summer day when we first heard Bea Schwager talk about her work at SPAZ, the Information Office for Undocumented Migrants in Zurich. She had attended the “enough.” event at ParkPlatz in Zurich together with three other women, all of w...

“Züri schenkt” and Valeriana helps

Ho ho ho, Christmas time has come around faster than we thought! And although Christmas is supposed to put us all in a peaceful, quiet and contemplative mood, we also know how stressful the time just before Christmas can be. Especially when it com...

Asking around: from “Mercedes” to “Kopfkino”

If you’ve ever studied in German, you may have heard the saying “Deutsche Sprache, schwere Sprache” (German language, difficult language). If you were to ask our employees, then they would probably tell you that in addition to being difficult, Ger...

Valeriana’s recipe kitchen: culinary excursions!

The way to a person’s heart is through his or her stomach. And just like with love, there’s also a lot we can learn about each other in the kitchen. That’s why today we’re taking you on a culinary journey to Ethiopia, where two of our employees’ f...