We are delighted to receive funding for the next 3 years from the National Lottery Community Fund, the largest funder of community activity in the UK. We have been granted nearly £150,000 from their Reaching Communities England fund which will part-fund our programme in Bristol from August 2023 to July 2026. The funding will help us support 150 children and young people who use English as an additional language (EAL) in Bristol every year.
National Lottery players raise over £30 million a week for good causes across the UK. The National Lottery Community Fund distributes a share of this to projects to support people and communities to prosper and thrive.
Jacari’s Director, Anna Bowie, said: “Thanks to National Lottery players, this grant means that we can support hundreds of young refugees, migrants and asylum-seekers in Bristol to build their language skills and confidence over the next 3 years. This will make a big difference to people’s lives.”
We have exciting plans to use this funding to develop our programmes in Bristol. Our established tutoring programme will continue, with fun informal tuition to increase confidence and language skills. This will be delivered either at childrens’ schools or in their home by volunteer tutors, the majority of whom will be students from UWE and Bristol University.
We also plan to grow our peer tutoring project, following the successful 1 year pilot at Montpelier School, where a group of 15 sixth-form students supported younger EAL pupils to learn English and settle in at school. Most of the pupils are newly arrived refugees and asylum-seekers from countries like Ukraine, Afghanistan and Syria. We plan to set up similar schemes in three other secondary schools in Bristol, supporting 60 children a year.
This funding will also allow us to develop other initiatives to support young people with EAL in the city of Bristol, especially newly arrived refugees and asylum-seekers living in temporary accommodation and hotels. We’ll be working closely with other organisations in Bristol to support these young people to learn English.
In addition to English language tutoring, this funding will also help us to organise regular trips and activities for the children and young people we support and their families. We will visit local attractions in Bristol and work with local organisations to run activities that get young people practising their language skills while doing something creative and fun, for example cookery classes at Coexist Community Kitchen or science activities with We The Curious.
Volunteers will continue to be at the heart of our programmes, and we are aiming to work with at least 400 volunteers over the next 3 years. Alongside our student and sixth-form volunteers, we will also be looking for other volunteers to provide tutoring in their local community, especially those with some prior teaching experience with young people or English language tutoring.