According to the Irish government, Ireland has taken in around 20,000 refugees from the war in Ukraine. Residents are opening the doors of their homes to welcome Ukrainian citizens who had to leave their country due to the war against Russia.
The Ukrainians speak Ukrainian, and many of the people that came to Ireland never had this contact with English before, so this is difficult even to communicate with Irish people, being a barrier between them.
Seda College, faced with this situation, decided to take the initiative of providing free English language classes for Ukrainian refugees. The project aims to facilitate their adaptation to Ireland, teaching the native language of the country.
Professor Phoebe commented on how this experience has been and how she feels participating in this SEDA College project: “It’s been an absolutely wonderful experience so far, it’s been a great experience be sort of way to help them out in any small way that we can, they seem to be enjoying the class so far, I received very good feedback so far”.
Tiago Mascarenhas, the CEO of SEDA, also gave us his perspective on this project: “We expect to help as many people as possible to learn English, because we are foreigners, we know that don’t speak English can separate you from having a social life, find new opportunities in works, and have a normal life.”
