SAVTE is the Sheffield Association for the Voluntary Teaching of English. Running across the city in community centres and church halls, it serves to provide a friendly and informal setting for speakers of other languages to begin to learn functional English, thereby becoming more active and empowered within their communities.
At Great Places, we’ve worked with SAVTE in the past, delivering an ESOL and cooking class on the Wybourn estate for roughly six months leading up to the pandemic, when unfortunately this provision came to an end.
Our East Region Community Investment Team reached out to SAVTE once again in October 2023, as the team had identified a growing number of our customers in our Wybourn Anchor Neighbourhood who spoke no or little English and needed support to break down this barrier. Following a registration session in February 2024 – with a positive uptake – the sessions have been underway at the Pat Midgley Community Hub since March 2024, where we’ve supported them by covering the cost of the room hire.
This summer, we touched base with the team one Tuesday morning and sat in one of the sessions. We got to chat with some of the attendees and volunteers, and see for ourselves the teaching in action.
Lesley and Asma were the volunteers who ran the session, which involved discussion-based activities with relevant day-to-day picture cards being shared out. Attendees described what they could see in the pictures, which spurred more discussion around those words, similar meaning-words and which contexts and situations they could be used in.
The sessions had a relaxed and friendly approach with customers being able to bring their children. Lesley had experience with doing voluntary work to support refugees, and had gotten involved with SAVTE through this network. And from the six-week training programme to delivering the sessions at the centre, the experience has been highly rewarding:
Where else would I meet so many people from different backgrounds?
One of our customers who regularly attends, Jifare, came from Ethiopia, and found the sessions through the advertisements in the centre. After getting in touch with the centre co-ordinator Christina Grant, she started to attend the sessions in their early days – and has barely missed one since. In fact, she encouraged many of the other regulars to attend, and can attest herself to the progress she has made, saying that she is now a confident speaker – the next challenge is to crack writing and grammar.
As Lesley remarked, it’s fantastic to see customers like Jifare grow in confidence after each session, and start to contribute to them more and more. The sessions are also person-centred and adaptable, and whilst they are primarily conversational sessions, they were open to feedback from attendees who expressed a wish for some practice with reading, and further study was also signposted to at Sheffield City College.
As a volunteering opportunity, for Asma the experience is a great way to meet new people and share her own experiences. Alma had worked in community development and poverty reduction projects in her home country, Pakistan, before moving to the UK three years ago. This volunteering experience was a great way to build up UK-based experience to help her apply for more permanent jobs in this field over here.
We’re proud to be supporting SAVTE with the great work they do in our neighbourhood of Wybourn, and across Sheffield. It’s a truly positive partnership, which SAVTE’s Kerry Cressey can attest to:
Great Places are a great organisation to partner with. Their commitment to building local community is evident and as such are a great resource in the communities they serve.
Sessions will pause for the summer holidays and resume again in September – it was great to have a taste of them last week and meet some lovely, friendly faces.
