Language class for refugees, Jesuit Refugee Service

During the past year I have been a volunteer for South Leeds Health for All. This is an umbrella organisation for many projects in the area to enable and empower people. Thus "health" is interpreted in a wide and holistic way. Since December I have been working in a new project to provide learning opportunities for Asylum Seekers and Refugees. It is a very humble project which began with a Co-Ordinator, who is the only paid worker, and me, as the only volunteer! Knowledge of English is our top priority and we have a regular Conversation Club which meets every Monday. In May we decided to launch into formal English classes as, due to new policies, provision for these people is now more severely restricted in the colleges. We ran a pilot project for 6 weeks and that showed that it would be a good idea to continue in the new academic year. In both activities we have had users from Iraq, Eritrea, Somalia, Cameroon, Ghana, Burundi, Afghanistan, South Africa, Russia. Having been lucky enough to have had wide multicultural experience in my life as RSCj I was very comfortable with this mix of cultures. But none of that prepared me for the new world I met when we held assessments for this term's courses!

The first applicants to be interviewed were from Burma and Angola, and two more were from Iraq. Towards the end of the last interview, Ian, the Co-ordinator came in to announce that there were nine Chinese people waiting, eight young women and one man, and each of the women had a baby with her. I went to the hall where they were sitting side by side in a long line, and each one (except the man), had a buggy behind her, with a baby, mostly under a year I would say.

I interviewed all of them, and discovered that they could all say and spell their name and address, give their phone number, and say how long they had been here. That showed me that they all live in LS11 (our post-code), and yet I had never been aware of Chinese people in the street! Most of them could not understand or speak any more English, so it was obvious that they would be beginners. By the end of interviewing the nine, five more had arrived, and in the intervening weeks another half dozen, all young women, and most with a young child born here.

The experience provided huge challenges to our possibilities of responding to their need, although that is eased by the fact that we have recruited two more volunteers (both lovely women with experience of ESOL).

But what really blew my mind was the fact that this sizeable number of young women had all fled China, managed to arrive here, and were trying to build a new life, while not knowing whether or not they could stay. To me it opened up the question of migration as a huge mystery. What drives people to abandon their country, culture and way of life to come to a country, language and culture which is so different? In all my encounters with other people from other countries I had never experienced this so profoundly.

Since then I have begun to know some of them better, and also their babies, who are all adorable and so good!! The desire to learn English is humbling, and although our verbal communication is very limited, much is achieved through eye contact and facial expressions. One day I was left holding one of the babies called Jessica (nearly all have been given English names!) She is seven months old and was not a bit fazed by not being held by her mother. As time went on our relationship developed through smiles and her lively jigging up and down, and again I experienced a deep feeling of meeting of cultures through this little one who as yet has no idea of her cultural roots or mine. I feel I am so lucky to be teaching them, have learned that words are not necessarily the most effective means of communication, but look forward to a time when language skills are such that we can explore together other common and different realities.

Marion Charely rscj
Province of England - Wales