Easy-access Courses for Women

The German Federal Office for Migration and Refugees sponsors a program called Easy-access Courses for Women, a series of seminars run by community organizations across the country designed to support female immigrants in acquiring German language skills — a critical part of the country’s larger integration project — as well as to introduce a variety of aspects of social life in Germany.

When stay-at-home mothers do not speak the majority language and live in segregated immigrant enclaves, they may lead day-to-day lives that are out of touch with the realities, expectations, opportunities, and ideals of the new society; their social isolation makes it difficult for them to begin to become integrated into the host society.  An internationally recognized program in Germany, Easy-access Courses for Women tackles the language needs of new immigrant women while also offering them a way out of isolation in culturally appropriate settings. Armin Laschet, Minister for Integration for the state of North Rhine-Westphalia explained to a New York Times reporter, “Our objective must be to reach women who live in social isolation and help them to speak German” (New York Times, June 13, 2008). Frau Schmitt Lang, the senior member of the team responsible for overseeing the program in the city of Gütersloh in North Rhine-Westphalia told us, “We are targeting women who do not leave their households very much . . . they are mostly from Muslim countries. [Typically] they are immigrant women who are ‘third country nationals’.” Ms. Schmitt Lang emphasized that the courses focus only on immigrant women and all instructors are women; when “it’s all women, then the husbands have fewer objections to them participating.”
The course blocks are administered with state-level funds, sometimes with additional local funding, and they are organized at local elementary schools, kindergartens, and day care centers under the motto, “Our children learn German, and we learn German as well.” While each site has some latitude to select specific topics for language instruction, the courses inevitably touch upon topics dear to the new immigrants. Frau Lang explained: “The German language is the focus, but they’re also talking about their own biography.  They think about their own problems, of course, from living between different cultures, the German and their own culture.  They learn something about German society, something about how to bring up the children here, and about the educational system in Germany.”  Women come to meet others who share similar experiences: “The women really discover that they have a lot in common with other immigrants. It is sometimes the first time they talk about their migration, the difficulties they had with moving; they talk about their children, about problems they might be having in the family.  So it doesn’t matter what nationality they’re from; they discover that there are a lot of common experiences,” Frau Lang told us.

Over time many sites have begun reporting similar developments: as the mothers learned more German and felt socially more at ease, and as they began to communicate more freely with their children’s teachers, “they were more willing to [go to] the caretakers at the kindergarten and began to communicate with them and speak to them.  So they learned [communication] through this course. They learned the value of education for themselves, and they also learned to communicate with the kindergarten staff. Also, the value they placed on the education of their child was elevated,” Frau Lang added.

Flexibility and local control seem to be the two principal features of this original program. In the words of another staff member, “Integration occurs locally. We usually gain additional support from local sources; there’s a city foundation that gives money and other local organizations also provide funding in other cities and localities.  Some of the courses that get additional funding will be more than 20 hours of instruction for one block and, depending on the local community and who’s providing the extra funding, the courses are extended; then there are more courses available.” Mrs. Tahir, a 27-year-old immigrant from Morocco and a graduate of a “Mama Learns German” course, told the New York Times in a recent interview (June 13, 2008) that she now “speaks German well enough to go shopping alone and takes buses and the subway by herself. She deals with government authorities and banks. And she meets with her daughter’s teachers at least once a month.”

For additional information, see http://www.integration-in-deutschland.de