Newsletter Archive
May 2010
Three Questions for Marijke Vermeulen
Four employees at WALA Heilmittel GmbH are exclusively engaged in coordinating requests to visit and planning in-house activities for guests. Two other employees are responsible for organising off-site events which the company arranges for customers and partners. Together they form the event management team. In our interview, team leader Marijke Vermeulen tells us why they are busier than ever this year.
How did WALA come to offer guided tours and events for guests?
Guided tours have a long tradition at WALA. Originally, Dr Rudolf Hauschka and the other company founders showed interested visitors around the premises themselves. It was important to them from the beginning to familiarise people with the ideas behind WALA and its preparations through personal encounters.
When I joined WALA 20 years ago there was just one colleague working half days who was responsible for organising guided tours. Over time the requests for visits grew so numerous that he was no longer able to keep up and needed the support of fellow WALA employees. The team which is now the event management team was born.
How many visitors does WALA welcome each year?
Altogether around 5,000 visitors from Germany and abroad visit WALA each year. These can be divided into many different groups. In German we use an acrostic based on the name WALA – which actually stands for Warmth Ash Light Ash, the WALA Medicines manufacturing process – to help us distinguish them.
'W' stands for the WALA visitors – from our subsidiaries in France, the Netherlands and Switzerland or our retailers.
'A' covers doctors, pharmacists, geriatric nursing schools and visitors from abroad, all of which begin with 'A' in German.
'L' stands for laypeople, country women and teachers, all beginning with 'L' in German, and finally 'A' stands for anthroposophical institutions and trainees (from schools for non-medical practitioners, estheticians, pharmaceutical technicians and midwives), both beginning with 'A' in German.
Of course these are just a few of the many groups we look after.
WALA is celebrating its 75th anniversary this year. What will this mean for you?
I shall be organising all the anniversary activities together with 10 people from the different WALA departments. These will include, for example, an internal exhibition of watercolours and drawings by the young Rudolf Hauschka. Over the course of the year employees will have several opportunities to learn more about the history of WALA from presentations – it is my job to choose the speakers. The main celebration, which will be attended by around 1000 employees and invited guests, will take place in September, and I shall be organising this, with another member of my team. I shall also be coordinating diverse press releases, announcements and advertisements.
Away from the WALA premises the 75th anniversary celebrations will include sponsorship of a travelling exhibition put on by the Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein and entitled Rudolf Steiner – The Alchemy of Everyday Life. This will open at the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, where it can be seen from 13 May to 3 October 2010. And of course the routine work of the event management team mustn’t be allowed to suffer because of all these extra tasks.
