With his lectures on "Intercultural skills for refugees" and "Intercultural skills for helpers", Dr. Moustafa Selim, integration officer at Hochschule Geisenheim University, has been fostering mutual understanding between refugees and people born in Germany for many years. His insights into foreign cultures, presented in his typically entertaining fashion, have long been known and sought after both within and beyond the Rheingau-Taunus district, which awarded Selim the 2016 Demography Prize for his commitment.

At the end of 2019, for instance, Selim was a visitor to the police headquarters of Western Hesse in Wiesbaden, where he gave a six-hour training course for 65 police officers. Egyptian-born Selim gave an introduction to the basis of the legal system in Arab and Islamic countries and how laws and Sharia are applied there. Selim, who works at Hochschule Geisenheim University as a scientist in the Department of Crop Protection, rounded off the training course with practical tips for dealing with Arab and Muslim people in day-to-day police life. "Eliminating prejudice and fostering mutual appreciation is very important to me. Police officers in particular play an important role in society; awakening their comprehension of the cultural characteristics of Muslim and Arab people can only be conducive to peaceful interaction," says Selim.