PATHWAYS TO OPPORTUNITY

Immigrants bring with them a wide range of skills and talents, and their educational backgrounds and linguistic fluency varies as greatly as their geographic and ethnic origins. Regardless of an individual’s personal, professional, or educational background, many stand to benefit from access to educational opportunities. The concept of adult education may be broadly defined and can include instruction aimed at facilitating new language development, courses to strengthen or develop literacy skills in new and/or native languages, and vocational training to help people learn new, marketable job skills and competencies or transfer existing skills to different occupational spheres. Providing these kinds of services is a fundamental part of many successful integration programs, as language competence, literacy, and professional skills are critical to achieving integration. Adult education should be built into all integration efforts, as without these opportunities, immigrants may be at risk for exclusion from key sectors of a society and its economy.

Learning a new language is one of the most difficult but also most crucial tasks that immigrants face when moving to a new country. Developing comprehension as well as competence in speaking is key to achieving integration across multiple domains: economic, social, cultural, civic, and more. The degree to which host countries provide new immigrants with free and low-cost opportunities to develop new language skills varies tremendously, with some societies making language courses widely available and others providing more limited and often insufficient options. The material and symbolic importance of assisting immigrants in developing new language skills cannot be overestimated. Programs created to facilitate this process can serve the dual and complementary purposes of providing adult education and supporting integration.

The German Federal Office for Migration and Refugees provides Easy-access Courses for Women, a series of seminars run by community organizations across the country designed to assist female immigrants in acquiring German language skills. For additional information, see http://www.integration-in-deutschland.de

The Municipal Department of Integration and Diversity in Vienna, Austria has developed Mama Lernt Deutsch or “Moms Learn German,” a program offering immigrant mothers German language courses in their children’s schools. Funded by the local government and implemented by organizations with extensive experience teaching German, the program was conceived as a way of providing convenient language instruction to immigrant women for a small fee. Like many integration initiatives built around language development, the course does much more than just teach German skills. It is a space for social interaction, and the programs include various excursions around the city to introduce participants to different institutions, services, and life in Vienna. The courses also cover topics such as schooling and health. Free childcare is provided. For further information, see http://www.wien.gv.at/english/social/integration/languagecourse/mum-learns.html

Queens Libraries, one of the three independent library systems in New York City, has supported one of the longest-standing local programs to attract a heterogeneous immigrant clientele and engage immigrant families in literacy-building activities. Since 1977, Queens Libraries has run the New Americans Program, which provides literacy and English language classes to adults and homework assistance to children. The libraries have continually adapted their programs to meet immigrants’ changing needs, and they offer computer workshops in multiple languages, online portals to immigrant social services, and courses on civic engagement and citizenship, among other activities. Circulating more than 23 million books, videos, music, and other library items in 70 languages, Queens Libraries promotes literacy in its many forms and in the different languages of the diverse communities it serves. For more information, see www.queenslibrary.org

Like developing language skills, finding employment that pays a living wage is an essential stage in the most basic form of integration: becoming an active and productive member of a new society. Some immigrants arrive with high levels of education and professional skills, yet are unable to find jobs; others have less training and fewer marketable skills. In both cases, adults require support to strengthen and transfer existing skills or to develop new vocational expertise in order to access high quality jobs in a different marketplace. Vocational training programs offer all adults, immigrants and non-immigrants alike, the opportunity to expand their skills and competencies in order to be more competitive and qualified job candidates. Initiatives to support vocational training may come from any level of government or through the efforts of non-governmental organizations. As countries all over the world struggle to transition workers to a new economic reality, programs that support adult education and vocational training will become increasingly important for all members of society, immigrants included. Given the centrality of accessing work in the process of successful immigrant adaptation and integration, we were surprised by the limited number of programs dedicated to vocational training for immigrants that we found in our research.

The Calgary Immigrant Women’s Association, in Calgary, Canada provides a range of vocational and employment access training to women who have prior office administration experience. The program aims to prepare immigrant women to qualify for entry-level office positions, to facilitate their re-entry into the labor force, and to build their confidence and self-sufficiency. Specialized training in accounting and reception consists of a six-week series of courses that covers basic skills and workplace expectations as well as an introduction to the major software packages required for many positions. For further information, see http://www.ciwa-online.com/Services/employment.html

Some immigrant parents have limited educational experiences and thus may have difficulty reading and writing in their own native language. In addition to the obvious challenges this presents them with in their own lives, it makes it difficult for these parents to support their children in their educational journeys. Programs that support the development of parental literacy indirectly support student achievement by role-modeling the value of education and by involving parents in their children's schooling.
The National Center for Family Literacy (NCFL) is a national program that has served over one million families across the United States. It takes a family literacy approach that is based on the premise that parents and children learn best when learning together. Parents and children build essential skills together, and the benefits of this program reach multiple generations as literacy development acts as a catalyst to improve academic achievement. Finding that many of the families who sought out their services were of immigrant origin, NCFL worked in collaboration with the Center for Applied Linguistics to develop a specialized curriculum for English language learners. Parenting for Academic Success: A Curriculum for Families Learning English is an innovative adult education curriculum designed for beginning English language learning parents with children in preschool through third grade. The curriculum simultaneously builds parents’ English skills while they support their children’s literacy development. Parents learn and review concepts in the classroom and then practice those skills at home so that they can help their children succeed at school. For more information, see www.famlit.org