Home sought for inner-city learning program

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This article was published 28/02/2022 (1458 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

An inner-city Winnipeg tutoring program is in search of a permanent home so it can scale-up homework help operations and provide in-person and virtual support to newcomer students learning amid COVID-19 disruptions.

The Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization of Manitoba is expanding its Homework and Education Hub for Youth (better known as the HEY program, to those who access it) to patch pandemic learning gaps.

Between translation issues, sibling babysitting duties, and limited access to both computers and quiet study spaces, there have been no shortage of barriers to quality remote learning, said Seeba Wahabi, the lone full-time employee who oversees HEY at present.

“Our students, mostly new immigrants and refugees, all inner-city (residents), don’t know fluent English or can communicate via emails very well or read well. It was a lot of challenge for them throughout the pandemic, until they were able to get some support,” said the teacher and school liaison at IRCOM.

Wahabi said IRCOM organized a tech library that has lent out some laptops to students, but many of the youth who access the free after-school program continue working to catch-up to their peers.

The organization has secured $500,000 to enhance recovery learning resources for students through one-on-one and group study sessions over the next three years via the TD Ready Challenge.

The TD Bank initiative supports community projects designed by not-for-profits and charities annually; the 2021 theme is about solutions to help address COVID-19 learning loss in math and reading, which has disproportionately affected certain groups of K-12 students, including newcomers, across North America.

Wahabi said the new funding will allow HEY to hire more employees and provide operational stability.

The program, which currently relies on part-time and volunteer educators, is temporarily operating out of the South Sudanese Community Centre in the downtown core. Classroom capacity is limited and has, in turn, prompted tutors to turn away participants in recent months.

“We are hoping that once we get a (permanent) space and it’s a more blended program — that means in-person as well as online, hopefully, we’ll have more staff and increase the number of students we can help,” Wahabi added.

There are more than 170 students currently registered in the homework program. Learners can access tutoring for all subjects, ranging from pre-calculus to English Language Arts.

Grade 12 student Suzi Gebrezgabiher has made HEY part of her extended school day routine.

While Suzi noted many of her peers at Churchill High School can ask their parents to help them with course questions, she needs to seek support elsewhere because her mother doesn’t speak English.

“Not all of us is in the same level of understanding… For me, it’s my third language,” Suzi said.

The 17-year-old’s family is originally from Eritrea, but she grew up in Sudan before moving to Canada six years ago. Her first two languages are Tigrinya and Arabic.

“I can’t stress this enough, how important (the HEY community) is. Once you move from a different country, it’s very difficult to make friends, make a new community. IRCOM has opened their arms,” Suzi added, during a break from a recent virtual tutoring session.

Wahabi, who was also on the video conference call, started to cry as Suzi described how important the tutoring program is in her high school life.

The IRCOM staffer said she and her colleagues started yelling while doing “air hugs,” jumping jacks, and Zumba dancing on a Zoom call when they learned their pitch to scale-up holistic, hands-on and tailored support to newcomer students had been selected for the 2021 TD Ready Challenge.

maggie.macintosh@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @macintoshmaggie