In a treatment room of Lingua Speech Therapy in Nieuwegein, Stannie Maessen is sitting on an office chair behind two screens. She works here as a practice nurse two days a week. The sight takes some getting used to, because Stannie worked for 22 years as a supervisor and coordinator at the UAF. In 2019, at the age of fifty, she decided to change course. Stannie: 'I hired a career coach. What do I want? Partly inspired by an initiative of the UMC Amsterdam, where speech therapists practice speech with refugee students, I decided to take the leap into speech therapy. I have had speech therapy myself, just like my father had when he had Parkinson's. It's all about communication in life, being able to speak well is a basic condition.'  

Opposite Stannie is thirty-eight-year-old Sinidu Tesfaye, who comes from Ethiopia. She studied medicine at university and worked as a teacher and general practitioner in her home country. In the Netherlands – Sinidu fled with her family as a result of a complex and protracted tribal conflict – she wants to get her BIG registration, a condition for working as a doctor. During this process she is supervised by the UAF. She receives financial support, among other things, and therefore has a mentor in the person of Stannie, with whom she practices the Dutch language and conducts patient interviews. Sinidu, thoughtfully and in excellent Dutch: 'In Ethiopia, as a doctor you say what needs to be done, in the Netherlands you work together with the patient. That's new to me.' 

Normally, Stannie and Sinidu meet at the library in their hometown, but for the occasion, the interview and accompanying photo shoot will take place at the health center where Lingua Speech Therapy is located. Stannie: 'We just took pictures in the building. I hope that this way we get Sinidu on the radar of the GPs here, that we get an entrance so that Sinidu can participate in the field.'