At 14, She Learned Dutch in Kindergarten. Now She Pays to Train Her Employees
After returning from Morocco at 14, Laamia Elyounoussi had to learn Dutch in a kindergarten classroom. Today, the Rotterdam entrepreneur pays for her employees’ training, with remarkable results.
Born in Amsterdam in 1980, Laamia Elyounoussi was sent to live with her grandparents in Morocco when she was just one year old. She grew up with her grandmother, who could neither read nor write, and learned early on to fend for herself. At 14, the death of her grandparents brought her abruptly back to the Netherlands. She found herself in a country whose language she barely knew. To learn Dutch, the teenager ended up in a class with kindergarten children. “I was completely lost,” she said in a profile published by VNO-NCW in January 2016.
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Her family situation soon became more complicated. Her parents divorced, her mother moved to Great Britain and her father returned to Morocco. Laamia was taken in by her aunt, Rahma El Mouden, a Moroccan entrepreneur based in Amsterdam and founder of the MAS cleaning group. She would later pass on to Laamia her passion for entrepreneurship and the importance of work.
At 20, Laamia landed an administrative job at an insurance company in Veenendaal. Her manager recognized her abilities and decided to help her improve her Dutch. For a year, she took four hours of lessons a day at the office, read books and did numerous writing exercises. The experience made a deep impression on the young woman, who saw how much an employer can change an employee’s life.
A company where cleaning opens the door to other careers
After several work experiences, including at her aunt’s company, Laamia founded Schone Zaak! in Rotterdam in 2009. Her idea was to make cleaning a first step toward a more ambitious career. Employees can learn Dutch at the company’s expense, then take MBO-level vocational training, part of the Dutch vocational education system. Some then land jobs in reception, administration or catering with Schone Zaak! clients.
The company has gradually grown. According to a report on Rotterdam’s economy in 2025, Schone Zaak! then had 80 employees and 150 clients. The document says that 100 people trained by Laamia had already left the company for better jobs elsewhere.
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On October 27, 2026, at a gathering organized by Voor Goed Agency in Rotterdam, Laamia revealed another distinctive feature of her company. She works exclusively with Rotterdam clients and hires employees based on their postal codes so they can walk to work. According to her figures, this arrangement has kept absenteeism below 1% for seventeen years, in an industry where she puts the average at between 7 and 10%.
