We are looking for 1 or 2 people to take on the day-to-day running of the project as our current Project Coordinator is leaving. This is a great opportunity to get involved in a small and dedicated organisation working to change the face of language teaching in London!

Hours: We have budgeted for 10 hours of work per week (at £12/hour). This could be done by one person, but we would prefer to find two people to each do 5 hours per week as a job share. This work is offered on a self-employed basis and you will need to provide proof of self-employment (eg. a letter/email from HMRC).

Start Date is flexible but the new Coordinator(s) should be in post by Monday 04/03/19 at the latest. There will be a hand-over period of up to 2 weeks after this date in which the current Coordinator will be able to offer support.

To apply please email babelsblessing@gmail.com by midday on Friday 22/02/2019. Please send your CV and tell us:

• why you’re interested in this job
• what you can bring to the role
• if you’re interested in 5 or 10 hours per week.

Duties and responsibilities

Communications

• Answering / forwarding emails
• Communicating with Trustees about organisational decision making
• Website & mailing list updates, some social media promotion
• Phone calls/121 meetings with teachers

Logistics

• Organising our programme of weekly language classes
• Registering students for classes, overseeing payments & invoices
• Advertising for, interviewing and appointing teachers and volunteers
• Checking invoices and paying staff
• Organising termly staff meetings and training sessions
• Managing shared drive of teaching resources, policies, staff handbook etc
• Writing and promoting annual report

Budget and fundraising

• Keeping up-to-date records of income and expenditure
• Coordinating fundraising activities
• Working with Trustees to ensure continuous financial viability of project
• Researching and keeping track of potential funding opportunities

Necessary skills

• Interest in horizontal organising and participatory education
• Ability to self-manage time: there will be periods with greater workload (e.g. beginning and end of terms) and periods with less. Being able to plan accordingly and be flexible
• Good communication skills
• IT skills: we use Gmail, WordPress, MailChimp, Facebook, Twitter, Acuity Scheduling, Stripe, DonateBox & online banking
• Experience in grassroots campaigning / charity groups desirable but not essential

People with personal and/or family experience of migration or asylum seeking are strongly encouraged to apply.

Our programme of paid evening classes raises approximately 60% of the money we need to run Babel’s. In order to keep our English classes completely free for our refugee and migrant students, we need to fundraise in other ways as well.

There’s a huge demand for free English lessons in London and we are hoping to do our bit by expanding our ESOL provision in September.

We’ve just launched a new crowdfunding campaign, which you can check out here:

https://chuffed.org/project/free-english-lessons-for-migrants-and-refugees

You can also check out our Donate page for other options including setting up a monthly donation!

Why study Latin-American Spanish? Of the 469 million people speaking Spanish in the world, more than 418 million are in Latin America and in the United States. Latin America is a place with a splendid variety of accents and slangs that make this a rich linguistic experience. You will connect with cultures and slang from 19 countries throughout Central and South America. Latin American Spanish has a beautiful and soft pronunciation that makes it much easier to learn… and it’s much easier to understand ‘standard’ Spanish pronunciation once you know a Latin American accent than vice-versa!

How are we going to teach? We use a very practical approach, constants conversation and games within the group and the teacher. In addition, you will listen different audios (from radios around South and Central America) with different accents so you will be able to recognise and understand the multiplicity of accents. As part of our conversations we are going to learn about latinamerica struggles and social movements: political groups as FARC, EZLN will be brought to the class from Colombia and Mexico (not physically!!!), climate groups such as COPIHN in Guatemala, gender issues with Mujeres Creando from Bolivia and more… a variety of social movements to connect with and understand.

Beginners: Tuesdays 7-9pm, Casa Francisco de Miranda (58 Grafton Way, W1T 5DL, Warren St), 03/10-12/12 and 16/01-27/03
Improvers: fortnightly Mondays 7-9pm, Unite House (128 Theobald’s Road, WC1X 8TN, Holborn), 02/10-11/12 and 15/01-12/03
~~Improvers is for people who can already hold a basic conversation in Spanish and will be a mix of grammar and conversation class~~

Student registration for 2017-18 opens on Sunday 17th September. For any inquiries email babelsblessing@gmail.com!

Ahlan wa sahlan!

Arabic is the most popular Semitic language, with 721 million people speaking it around the world. Giving the dramatic changes and developments in the Middle East, a lot of people are showing interest in learning Arabic to be able to follow the political, social and human rights developments and well as communicating with the Arab refugees, migrants and asylum seekers who escaped their countries seeking peace and stability.

Omar (from Syria, teaching beginners) says: “I came to England in late 2015 as asylum seeker. I was one of the students of English classes offered by Babel’s Blessing for free to immigrants. After the end of the semester I applied to be a teacher in Babel’s Blessing. I loved this experience, I never imagined that I would be a teacher. But Babel’s made it easy to give me basics, how to prepare lessons and deal with students according to their needs and ages. And I found it a unique experience as students are eager to learn the language according to their needs and most of them working in the field of human rights or in a charity and have direct contact with people whose mother tongue is Arabic and may not speak others.”

Amany (from Palestine, teaching improvers) says: “I come from Palestine, where Arabic is used as the main language. It is not only about communicating. Yet, I believe that is also about culture and tradition. I know that Arabic is known as a difficult language, however, it could be easily learnt if you are interested enough in the culture and its people.”

Beginners: Wednesdays 7-9pm, Jaz & Jul’s Chocolate House (1 Chapel Market, N1 9EZ, Angel), 04/10-13/12 and 17/01-28/03
Improvers: Wednesdays 7-9pm, Jaz & Jul’s Chocolate House (1 Chapel Market, N1 9EZ, Angel), 04/10-13/12 only (we might be able to add a second term at a later date)
~~Improvers is intended for people who took our beginners’ class last year, who have studied Arabic for a few months recently, or learned several years ago and would like to re-learn. If you’re not sure which level to sign up for, don’t worry, you can easily switch on the first day!~~

Student registration for 2017-18 opens on Sunday 17th September. Any questions? Email babelsblessing@gmail.com!

Drinking songs! Songs of Struggle, Resistance & Defiance! Contemporary & Traditional songs to sing on the Streets and at Gatherings:

Yiddish is the language that was used to reach the Jewish masses in Eastern Europe as the secular social justice movement was formed.

Come together at the London Action Resource Centre (LARC, formerly a school, a synagogue, and where some of the major yiddish publications were produced at the turn of the century) in Whitechapel where tradition and activism combine to transform the present. Supported by the rich multi-cultural history that surrounds us in Whitechapel, these workshops will transform your experience of singing and what it can do for you individually and as a collective voice.

All who are interested welcome. This is a very relaxed class and whilst a passion for singing helps, it’s also totally inclusive of people who don’t have a background in performance or Yiddish.

Teacher/facilitator: Rachel is a singer, song-collector and workshop facilitator with many years of experience researching and performing various strands of Jewish vocal repertoire, specifically Eastern European Yiddish folk song, as it relates to Jewish diasporic identity.  As well as performing throughout the UK and in New York, Montreal and Toronto, she teaches choirs and workshops, and facilitates music therapy sessions for people with dementia.

Mondays 7-9pm, LARC (62 Fieldgate Street, E1 1ES, Whitechapel), 25/09-11/12 and 15/01-26/03
~~No prior knowledge of Yiddish (or singing) required!~~

You can book for the full course in advance, or drop in and pay in cash.

Student registration for 2017-18 opens on Sunday 17th September. For any inquiries email babelsblessing@gmail.com!

When Babel’s Blessing started in summer 2015, it was the brainchild of Jewish activists; inspired by our own families’ experiences of migration and being a minority in the UK, we wanted to use the knowledge and skills of our community to support other migrants and minorities of today.

One of our first courses was a big experiment: could we reproduce the experience of bar/bat mitzvah, the Jewish coming-of-age ceremony, for adults? With radical politics and gender equality? With humour and weirdness and an acceptance of all students’ different levels of knowledge and experience of Judaism? With proper Torah reading in an actual synagogue?

It turned out that YES WE COULD, and it was a life-changing experience: so we’re bringing it back this year!

This is a course for adults who did not have a bar/bat mitzvah, didn’t like theirs, or did it in the wrong name/gender. Through this course, you will explore Judaism, including festivals, rituals, texts and history. You will learn to read from the Torah and talk about it, culminating in a ceremony at the end of two terms. This is your chance to explore Judaism on your terms, with no preconditions about beliefs, background or practice.

Wednesdays 6.30-8.30pm, South London Liberal Synagogue (Prentis Road, SW16 1QB, Streatham), 04/10-13/12 (with a week off on 08/11) and 24/01-04/04 (with a week off on 28/02).

Student registration for 2017-18 opens on Sunday 17th September. For any inquiries email babelsblessing@gmail.com!

For two years now we have been running English classes at Praxis Community Projects in Bethnal Green, where many of our students are migrants from Bangladesh. We think it’s about time we also helped the local English speakers to speak one of their neighbours’ languages, so this year we will run a beginners’ Bengali class at Praxis.

Our teacher Ruksana says:

If you need to communicate with the Bengali or Sylheti community through your line of work, or just out if interest, join me at Praxis Community Projects for some Bengali lessons!

I am a native speaker Bengali/Sylheti teacher, and I can help if you are new to the language or if you are improving. I cover basic, everyday phrases that will be useful to you and build up vocabulary lesson by lesson.

Each lesson, I will share interesting information about the Bengali culture such as weddings, rice growing, drying mangoes on the roof!

Mondays 6.30-8.30pm, Praxis Community Projects (Pott Street, E2 0EF, Bethnal Green), 02/10-11/12 and 15/01-26/03

Student registration for 2017-18 opens on Sunday 17th September. For any inquiries email babelsblessing@gmail.com!