by Sam Hutchison

17 June 2008

Quito, Ecuador: Since 2006, UNV has been cooperating with the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Ecuador on teaching English to displaced people. The project mobilizes local volunteers who help refugees prepare for life in English-speaking destinations.

UNHCR has worked in Ecuador since 2000, providing assistance to people - mostly from Colombia - who come to the country after fleeing threats or violence. There are currently 27 UNV volunteers working with UNHCR in Ecuador, representing about 50 percent of the agency’s workforce there.

Part of UNHCR’s work consists of identifying people who need to be resettled in a different country where they will be better able to restart their lives. The English teaching project supported by UNV started out with a basic curriculum outlining the vocabulary and common expressions that should be taught, while volunteer teachers worked together to collect materials.

Twelve volunteer teachers were drawn from UNV volunteers and local people and 60 students participated. They were divided between children, teenagers and adults and taught for six weeks in total, with two and a half hours of classes per week.

Challenges faced by the students and teachers included low literacy levels and a lack of formal teaching experience. Occasionally, students couldn’t make it to their classes due to their difficult financial situations and some volunteers also had to deal with certain problems, such as long-distance rush-hour travel.

However, a friendly and cooperative learning environment emerged and both teachers and students were determined to study, share and overcome these difficulties. Volunteers who have travelled abroad also shared their experiences with the students, building confidence in those who were apprehensive about travelling to their destination countries.

Julio, a 25 year old refugee, was very interested in the English classes; he was motivated to learn not only English but French and Italian too. He discovered that he was good at languages: "Learning a language is learning the culture," he remarked. Lessons learned back in Quito have helped him in his new home Canada.

There are 180,000 refugees living in Ecuador, of which only 16,500 have the legal refugee status.