Hamara Project

Hamara means 'ours' in the Urdu language, one of the languages of the Indian subcontinent. It was used for an educational project which was user-led, meaning that the learners themselves determined to a large extent the activities in which they participated.

The project was initiated by BEEAS [Birmingham Ethnic Education & Advisory Service] and had two excellent facilitators, whom I happen to know as we followed the same course for assistant English language teacher last year. They did not simply facilitate the group process of the forty women (two batches) who made up the Hamara Project, but they also made a great effort to recruit the women learners themselves.

It is interesting to note how they did it, for recruitment may well be the more difficult part of the Hamara Project, more difficult than the educational sessions proper. I quote from the evaluation report: "They delivered flyers to every road in the target area and handed out leaflets in school playgrounds. They spoke to women on the street and at shops and they worked closely with the learning mentors at prince Albert and Mansfield Schools to identify potential recruits." The two facilitators, women of Asian origin themselves, really reached out and made full use of their own backgrounds and language abilities to overcome suspicion, shyness and fear on the part of their target learners.

As it turned out they were very successful. They recruited the kind of women they wanted to recruit: those in social isolation who up to now had not participated in any sort of educational programme. Again I quote from the evaluation report: "[...] for many of the women this was the first opportunity in the whole of their lives to join a programme. For some it was the first opportunity to participate in an activity outside of the family circle and to attend independently. For them, this Project offered a first taste of independence as adult women, and they, naturally, were very nervous and had a fear of speaking out within the group setting."

The learning process did not simply take place in the small community centre which opened its doors to the women learners. The informality of the programme meant that they could go out and visit other places like the nearby library and health centre or musea and art galleries in the heart of the City. Some of the women had to learn some basic social skills: "For example, when the women all caught the bus together to go to the City Centre, they had no idea that they had to wait for people to get off the bus before they pushed their way on. They did not understand the critical comments that came from the other bus travellers who viewed their behaviour as being 'rude' rather than being a lack of understanding. The facilitators also encouraged the women to make eye contact wiht strangers with whom they were undertaking transactions rather than look away as, again, this could be misunderstood."

All activities included an English and a health component, which was much appreciated by the women learners. "One beneficiary explained that, although she had lived in England for 14 years she was still unable to speak the language. This was due to the fact that when she arrived in the country she lived with her extended family and stayed within the home. She brought up her children and now that they are grown up she wished to learn to speak more fluently. She said that her lack of language skills embarassed her especially when answering the telephone or going to hospital appointments. She especially enjoyed the ESOL [English for Speakers of Other Languages] component of the programme."

A lasting benefit of the project is that the women made friends with one another. They did not want to lose each other's company and they did not want the programme to stop. BEEAS acknowledged that you cannot make people enthusiastic and then leave them out in the cold. They managed a continuation of the programme. albeit in a diminished form because of financial constraints.

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