Appointment to audit committee: Stadtwerke master craftswoman appointed for honorary position
11.03.2022 – Sophie Hestermann, a gardener with a master craftsman's certificate from the greenery department of Stadtwerke Offenbach, has been appointed to the examination board of the professional association for gardening and landscaping. She was recommended for this honorary position by the Eugen-Kaiser-Schule in Hanau to the Landesbetrieb Landwirtschaft Hessen.
Hestermann not only completed her vocational training at the school during her apprenticeship, but also the theoretical part of her advanced training to become a master craftswoman. With the support of her employer, Stadtwerke Offenbach, she completed this training while working and graduated at the top of her class.
In the next step, she will now take part in the final examinations for future journeymen in gardening and landscaping, initially as an assessor, in order to prepare for her new role. After some time, she will then be appointed as a deputy for the members of the examination board and can then become a permanent member. She is already well versed in the subject of training and the content covered here, as her trainer examination was not that long ago. As a trainer, she has already successfully prepared the first graduate for his final examination: Dominik Blum is the first horticulturist and landscaper to be trained at Stadtwerke Offenbach. He has now passed his exam.
"Of course, I won't be allowed to examine our own trainees," says Sophie Hestermann. "But through this voluntary work, I am much better informed about the exam content. Our trainees will certainly benefit from this." After taking on Dominik Blum, Stadtwerke Offenbach's Stadtservice, which is responsible for greenery, would like to continue training gardening and landscaping specialists. "As a subsidiary of Stadtwerke Offenbach, we are very versatile here," says department head Johannes Irgel. "The trainees can also get a taste of our own workshop for our tools and work in the cemetery. They learn about paving work, pond construction, laying gravel paths and are also allowed to work creatively. We also have very individual support in our department for both the practical and theoretical parts of the training."
Can the trainer and future examiner Sophie Hestermann reveal what content the current candidates need to have internalized in order to graduate? Unfortunately, the answer doesn't sound so much like creative planning, but more like dry memorization: "The professional organizations are very important, both with the abbreviations and also written out who they are and what their responsibilities are." But even that, the trainer assures us, can be learned before the exam.