Winter greetings from the MESH Team
Greetings from the MESH team. With the recent cold snap, we are certainly getting that seasonal feeling at MESH, as we move towards December. It has been a very busy calendar year for us, as we have taken on a series of additional projects which supplement and enrich our core offer.
The second half of the year has been challenging in some respects. August was marred by some ugly scenes of violence and racism across the country, including Yorkshire & Humber. We cannot forget these scenes and the ways in which they made our friends and neighbours feel vulnerable and unsafe. At the same time, we should not forget the positive and forthright response of so many individuals and organisations, re-stating their commitment to make our region a place of welcome. It is worth stating loud and clear what we said in June in our summer newsletter: Yorkshire & Humber is a home for all of us, and it is made by all of us.
Learning English in Yorkshire and the Humber
The team continue to work every week to ensure that LEYH provides up to date and accurate information to enable learners to find classes that suit them and are within easy reach. LEYH is a collaborative effort. We manage this resource with the input of our colleagues across the ESOL sector, who regularly provide us with up to date information on their offer. Thank you to all those colleagues who keep their information up to date, either by directly accessing LEYH or by contacting our development workers. We cannot do it without you! If you have information on new provision and you are not sure which of the MESH team to contact, please drop us a line at info@yhmesh.org.uk and we will get back to you.
If you have not recently visited LEYH, check out our new Information Resource for Learners (IRL) focused on volunteering. This is designed to deliver information about volunteering direct to learners and those that advise them, as well as providing a chance to practice language around accessing volunteering opportunities, plus links to agencies across the region. This is the second in our IRL series, following the Going to University resource posted earlier in the year.
Learning English Plus
LE+ features some exciting new learning resources recently posted. We have a set of resources focused on challenges faced by many migrant families and particularly young people acting as carers and translators for their family members. Our Family Challenges resource builds on our partnership on the Transnational Families in Europe: Care, Inequalities and Wellbeing project, led by Universities of Reading and Leeds.
In addition, please take a look at our developing Exploring & Belonging pages – these resources, including level appropriate, downloadable reading resources, have been developed from our National Lottery Heritage Fund project with forced migrant participants in Hull and Huddersfield, researching their own ideas of local heritage in the places they live. We hope you can use these resources with your learners, and also use them as inspiration for launching enquiries into local places in your area. We all belong! We can all explore!
Visit the projects page of the MESH website for information on all our projects. This includes our new Connect & Grow project, which looks to facilitate access to training and volunteering opportunities for asylum seekers and other forced migrants across the region. You may well hear more from us about this project as we move into 2025.
In a related development, a reminder that we have our final Lunchtime Showcase of the year on December 2nd, 12.30. At this session, we will focus on ESOL learners as volunteers, and look at how ESOL learners can benefit from volunteering in a range of different contexts. We are very pleased to have several ESOL learners speaking at this event about their experience, as well as those running programmes that recruit ESOL learners as volunteers. We look forward to seeing you there!
