Newcastle College has launched a new course, designed specifically to support Ukrainian refugees.
The course, which will run once a week throughout June and July, will offer help with employability skills and English language through the College’s ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) department.
It comes in response to a meeting with 21 Ukrainian refugees who have recently arrived in the city. Newcastle College’s ESOL Curriculum Leader, Mark Hutchinson, said “I don’t think I have ever met a group of refugees before who have so recently fled a warzone. A couple of the women still had visible wounds. They were incredibly grateful to be offered a class. They’re incredibly enthusiastic about integrating into UK society; one woman (an engineer in Ukraine) has already got a full-time job in a hotel after just two weeks living in this country.”
This enrolment session was delivered in collaboration with the two other major providers of ESOL in Newcastle; Newcastle City Learning (who will also deliver a one-day-a-week course for beginner Ukrainian learners) and Action Language (who will deliver drop-in support and conversation English sessions).
The new course has been designed as part of NCG’s ‘Our Community is Your Community’ project, formed during Colleges Week 2021. Now headed up by former refugee Shivan Merza, the project is aimed at adapting NCG’s skills, employability and wellbeing support to address the unique challenges that refugee students experience.