English Classes for Refugees
Thanks to the new government's initiatives, Canada is now seeing a fairly rapid influx of refugees - most of whom are coming from Syria. Since they have been arriving so quickly, the various organizations working with refugees here in Vancouver have been having a difficult time keeping up. This has led to significant wait times for newly arrived refugees to get into English classes.
Learning English is vital. Without basic language skills, it can be very difficult for newly arrived refugees and immigrants to feel comfortable or find work in their new environment, and it can be a very frustrating and alienating experience.
I spent 4 years living in Syria, teaching English for the majority of that time. I have experience not only in teaching English as a second language, but teaching English to Syrians and Arabic speakers.
With that in mind, I am working to set up FREE English classes for newly arrived refugees and immigrants. These classes will be aimed at those with lower level or no English skills, and will focus primarily on conversation and vocabulary that will be immediately useful.
I have found a venue in Surrey, and they have offered up their space to be used for free once a week for this purpose. What we need now is, essentially, to cover printing costs.
We'll need a very small amount of money for the initial start-up - to cover printing teacher's materials, student materials, purchasing whiteboard markers, etc. The rest of the money raised will go to ongoing costs - again, mainly printing of student and teacher materials.
The set amount of $1500 could support this project for several months, depending on the amount of students registered.
For more information, visit:
http://vancitycollective.org/surreyenglish
The Facebook page for the classes is here:
https://www.facebook.com/freesurreyenglish
And in case you're wanting more information about who is behind all this - check out this video done recently by TelusOptik about our group (Vancity Syrian Collective):
https://youtu.be/NJ6zHQgeOq0
Vancity Syrian Collective's Facebook page is here:
https://www.facebook.com/SyrianCollective
CBC article on wait times:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/syrian-refugees-in-b-c-face-long-waits-for-english-courses-1.3394425
