help alliance and “Stern des Südens” at the Hessentag event

Information booth and drawing competition for children

“MAIN Rüsselsheim – OUR Hesse” was the slogan for last Friday afternoon’s official opening of the Hessentag event in Rüsselsheim. This year’s state fair, with some 1,500 individual events, is bigger and more diverse than ever before.

The help alliance is also represented at the Hessentag event with its “Stern des Südens” (meaning “star of the south”) project. Their joint stand, next to the stage of the “Mainspitze” newspaper in the so-called club village by the Opel villas, offers a wide range of information material as well as a drawing competition for children.

For ten years now, help alliance (the aid organization of the Lufthansa Group), together with the “Stern des Südens” association from Flörsheim, has been providing children with a migration background with prospects for a better future. Volunteers from the Lufthansa Group and members of the association in the city on the River Main offer support to more than 50 children each day.

Their main focus is on the promotion of language and education. And they have had great success, as language and education are the key factors for successful and sustainable integration into our society here in Germany.

The Hessentag event in Rüsselsheim is the 57th state fair to have been held – the first one was in 1961 in Alsfeld. According to the state chancellery, the event offers a combination of tradition and modernity, entertainment and information. The event will also be host to such stars as Gianna Nannini, Peter Maffay and Till Brönner, the Scorpions and Kings of Leon.

The traditional parade on Sunday 18 June, with some 170 floats, concludes the Hessentag event. The parade through Rüsselsheim is 2.4 kilometers long and takes three and a half hours. The hosts for the next two years will be Korbach in 2018, and Bad Hersfeld in 2019.