Several of the refugee women that we work with are learning very basic English and Handwriting Skills. So many refugee women have never been educated. Often, the women in our basic English conversation classes have never even held a pencil. Stop a minute and think about that. Do you remember your teacher in preschool or Kindergarten or your mom helping you to hold one of those big fat pencils and teaching you how to form the letters of the English alphabet on paper? I actually remember my teacher teaching me to hold the pencil properly as I would grasp it with my whole fist. I remember those cap erasers on the end of my pencil would make my pencil feel top-heavy and awkward. I remember writing the letters in my name backwards. Learning to write is a challenge and it takes several years to actually master it well. And then there is phonics and grammar. So many of our refugee students have no basic English vocabulary, no handwriting skills and no former education at all. Teaching uneducated adults how to write and read is a real challenge.

Some volunteers (even teachers trained in ESL) have had to realize that their ESL and a lot of their teacher training doesn’t help as much as they thought it would as they work with our refugee women. Teaching our ladies the English skills they need to be successful in America is a lot more difficult than one might imagine. There seems to be little written material that teaches uneducated adults English. If an adult has an education in their own country and needs to learn English in America there are tools and resources to help make that happen. Asha’s Refuge and other organizations like us have had to pull together resources and write our own along the way. We must help build the vocabulary of our students as they are already adults and have to know how to do things like write their name, sign their name, write the date (understand what they are writing), say and write their address, etc.

Our basic English Conversation Class teachers, Sara, Rebecca and Chris have found a few helpful resources that they feel will help our ladies. (By the way, we sincerely thank Sara, Rebecca and Chris for their hearts commitment to leading and teaching this group of women.) We are asking for donations to purchase the needed resources for our basic English class. You may contribute online here via PayPal or feel free to purchase the items and bring or mail them to us. I have listed items we need below. Thanks in advance for your help!

Alphabet CD; One Little Sound-Fun with Phonics and Numbers by Hap Palmer
Amazon for $14.99
Currently we have seven (7) ladies that would like one. We’d like to have more on hand for new refugee students.

Oxford Picture Dictionary, second edition, monolingual
Amazon for about $11.00
Currently we need (12) Twelve but would like to have more for future new refugees