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Tutoring program touches Somali refugees
March 09, 2007
Nineteen PLU students and one staff member are spending their Wednesday evenings tutoring Somali Bantu refugees.
“The Somali Bantu have a difficult and violent past,” said junior Kerri Greenaway, coordinator of the tutoring program.
Former Somali slaves, the Bantu remained a persecuted minority there even after emancipation. When civil war erupted in 1991, the Bantu were forced to flee on foot to refugee camps in Kenya. There, the survivors languished for 10 years or more. The United States eventually granted them refugee status, and nearly 12,000 Bantu began arriving here in early 2003.
The tutoring program is part of an effort by St. Mark’s Lutheran Church by The Narrows and PLU to educate the Bantu children residing in Tacoma. According to Greenaway, Seattle, Tacoma and Fife all have a large population of Bantu refugees.
St. Mark’s involvement with the refugees began when the church sponsored a Bantu family and realized the children needed educational help, Greenaway said. The church applied for and received a grant from the Wheatridge Foundation to develop and implement a tutoring program.
The church contacted PLU to find a student who would coordinate the program. Social work professor JoDee Keller put them in contact with Greenaway, a social work major, and she spent J-Term organizing the program. The tutoring will run through spring semester.
The program attracted 26 Bantu children. Every Wednesday evening from 6 to 8 p.m., the children and their families gather at the Tacoma Community House for a tutoring session with the PLU volunteers.
Most of the children have had little or no education because the Bantu were oppressed in both Somalia and the Kenyan refugee camps. When the children enter the American public school system, they are placed near the same grade level of children their age even though they lack many basic skills, Greenaway said.
“We mostly help them with literacy skills, math and language,” Greenaway said. “They trick you in English. They can speak fluently, but they can’t read you ‘Harry Potter.’”
For example, the 16-year-old student Greenaway works with speaks English well, but she is unable to articulate the sounds English letters make individually. The students are eager to learn though, and that makes the tutoring time much more enjoyable, Greenaway explained.
For the most part, each tutor works one-on-one with the same Bantu child each week, Greenaway said. Since the tutor-to-student ratio isn’t equal, the younger children near preschool age are clustered into groups of two or three and work on basic skills most American youngsters learn in the home, such as cutting and pasting.
“All of these kids just really want to learn,” Greenaway said. “Their spirit is amazing and inspiring for people from PLU who think our lives are tough, but in comparison, they’re really not.”
In addition to helping the students with academic work, Greenaway hopes the volunteers can take on a mentoring role. For example, during a recent tutoring session, she and her student talked about what she’d like to be when she grows up. She wants to be a postal worker, Greenaway said.
The PLU volunteers received a two-hour training session before the tutoring program began. The session included information on how to teach English as a second language, Bantu culture and how to track the progress of the students.
Most of the PLU volunteers have past tutoring experience, and the majority are either education or social work majors. Their wealth of knowledge and experience has helped the program start smoothly, Greenaway said.
Greenaway is still looking for volunteers. If you are interested, contact Greenaway at kerri.greenaway@plu.edu. The process includes an application, background check and mini-training session.
Former Somali slaves, the Bantu remained a persecuted minority there even after emancipation. When civil war erupted in 1991, the Bantu were forced to flee on foot to refugee camps in Kenya. There, the survivors languished for 10 years or more. The United States eventually granted them refugee status, and nearly 12,000 Bantu began arriving here in early 2003.
The tutoring program is part of an effort by St. Mark’s Lutheran Church by The Narrows and PLU to educate the Bantu children residing in Tacoma. According to Greenaway, Seattle, Tacoma and Fife all have a large population of Bantu refugees.
St. Mark’s involvement with the refugees began when the church sponsored a Bantu family and realized the children needed educational help, Greenaway said. The church applied for and received a grant from the Wheatridge Foundation to develop and implement a tutoring program.
The church contacted PLU to find a student who would coordinate the program. Social work professor JoDee Keller put them in contact with Greenaway, a social work major, and she spent J-Term organizing the program. The tutoring will run through spring semester.
The program attracted 26 Bantu children. Every Wednesday evening from 6 to 8 p.m., the children and their families gather at the Tacoma Community House for a tutoring session with the PLU volunteers.
Most of the children have had little or no education because the Bantu were oppressed in both Somalia and the Kenyan refugee camps. When the children enter the American public school system, they are placed near the same grade level of children their age even though they lack many basic skills, Greenaway said.
“We mostly help them with literacy skills, math and language,” Greenaway said. “They trick you in English. They can speak fluently, but they can’t read you ‘Harry Potter.’”
For example, the 16-year-old student Greenaway works with speaks English well, but she is unable to articulate the sounds English letters make individually. The students are eager to learn though, and that makes the tutoring time much more enjoyable, Greenaway explained.
For the most part, each tutor works one-on-one with the same Bantu child each week, Greenaway said. Since the tutor-to-student ratio isn’t equal, the younger children near preschool age are clustered into groups of two or three and work on basic skills most American youngsters learn in the home, such as cutting and pasting.
“All of these kids just really want to learn,” Greenaway said. “Their spirit is amazing and inspiring for people from PLU who think our lives are tough, but in comparison, they’re really not.”
In addition to helping the students with academic work, Greenaway hopes the volunteers can take on a mentoring role. For example, during a recent tutoring session, she and her student talked about what she’d like to be when she grows up. She wants to be a postal worker, Greenaway said.
The PLU volunteers received a two-hour training session before the tutoring program began. The session included information on how to teach English as a second language, Bantu culture and how to track the progress of the students.
Most of the PLU volunteers have past tutoring experience, and the majority are either education or social work majors. Their wealth of knowledge and experience has helped the program start smoothly, Greenaway said.
Greenaway is still looking for volunteers. If you are interested, contact Greenaway at kerri.greenaway@plu.edu. The process includes an application, background check and mini-training session.