babel's blessing language school
Do you want to learn more Yiddish than the occasional Oy Vey? Get a crash-course
in Hebrew and/or Arabic before setting off to the Holy Land? Or have you
recently moved to this rainy country, and need to work on your English? We have
a course for you. Babel’s Blessing is a grassroots language school set up in
summer 2015. We run affordable language classes for adults in a number of
languages that are politically relevant for our communities. The income we get
from these helps us to run our programme of free English classes for migrants,
refugees and asylum seekers. We see language learning as being about cultural
exchange, community building, and a way for members of diaspora communities to
reconnect with their/our heritage. In our classes, we talk about politics,
culture, art and history through language as it is spoken – valuing street
language and varied accents rather than one ‘correct’ version. We apply critical
pedagogy methods and principles across all our classes, and we run as a
democratic community of learners, where students are actively involved in
shaping the learning process. Our teachers are also our team members,
administrators, fundraisers, event hosts and blog writers. We are a
non-hierarchical organisation and everyone is encouraged to take an active role
in the direction of the project.
