Walk A Mile Challenge

Dust off those trainers and join us as we attempt to collectively walk/run/cycle the equivalent distance from Moira Refugee camp on the Greek Island of Lesbos all the way to Sheffield, England over the month of May.

That’s a huge 2,214 miles!

This challenge is all about standing in solidarity with and raising vital funds for those who have been displaced and had to make perilous and challenging journeys to the UK often through no choice of their own.

Unlike them, you do have a choice! So let’s get active in May and put those miles to good use.

We’re aiming to raise £1 in sponsorship for every mile walked, so if we manage to walk all the way we will together have raised £2,214!

And the best bit…you wont be doing it alone - this is a group challenge and so more is definitely merrier! Whatever your age, and whatever your ability, you can help us reach this target by joining our group and raising vital funds for Hope English School, helping us to keep our classes running and free at point of access for our students.

Whether you walk every day to work or school or go for a big hike at the weekend – it all adds us to help us collectively reach our goal! And if walking isn’t your thing, you can run or cycle your miles too.

Interested? This is what you need to do…

  1. Register here and pledge how many miles you think you can do - we are asking you to raise £1 for every mile you do. We will then send you our Sponsor Pack with everything you need to know about getting sponsors.

  2. Save the date of our group walks. The first one is on Monday 2nd May 11am-2pm, meeting at Endcliffe Park by the café. The second one will happen on Sunday 29th May 11am-2pm, meeting at Rivelin Valley by the café. 

  3. Collect your sponsorship - we suggest £1 for every mile completed. Either use and share the Go Fund Me page or feel free to use an old fashioned sponsor form if you prefer!

  4. Walk, run or cycle. See if you can hit your daily or weekly target for both miles covered and money raised. Don’t forget to take photos and tag us and use the hastag #WAM when you share them!

  5. Log your miles using the Hope English School App (available on the App Store or Google Play Store). You can easily add in your miles every time you complete them. Or if you are already a Strava user you can join our Walk a Mile group every mile you walk will be automatically added to our total (Just search for Hope English School on Strava)!

  6. Share your progress and keep track on how far we’ve got (and how far we’ve got left to go) by joining our special Walk a Mile Facebook or Whatsapp group. We will regularly be updating it with our group total so it should be a great motivational tool!

To get us off to a great start we are planning a group walk on Monday May 2nd, where you can meet friends, supporters and students, all are welcome to join us! If you are not local to Sheffield, why not walk at the same time where you are and join us in spirit? 

We’ll also finish the challenge with another group walk, so we hope that you will join us at one or both if you can.

New Year Appeal

Due to the huge demand and positive feedback following our Digital Skills Course Pilot, we are looking to make the course more widely available by starting 3 new classes in the new year! The courses will be offered free of charge to asylum seekers, refugees and other vulnerable migrants across South Yorkshire.

To make this possible, we urgently need to buy 5 pairs of headphones, 5 laptops, and a projector. We hope you can help!

A new pair of headphones will cost £5.

A new laptop will cost £300.

A new projector will cost £200.

Any donation, big or small, would have a huge impact and enable us to keep providing such valuable classes.

 

For more information on the Digital Skills Course...

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the way we use the internet and digital skills are now essential in order to engage in an ever-increasingly "online" world. This has highlighted the need to tackle the digital divide in ensuring access to digital devices and the skills needed to navigate them.

We have developed a 12-week Digital Skills course aimed specifically at speakers of other languages. The course uses 'Learn My Way ' resources from the Good Things Foundation which we have adapted for the ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) classroom. All classes are delivered by qualified ESOL teachers in easily accessible locations and when necessary we partner with local creche services so that even students with small children are able to engage freely.

The course covers:

  • Online basics - keyboard skills, internet searches

  • Email

  • Office programmes/ creating documents

  • Learning online

  • Online safety/socialising

  • Online shopping

  • Job hunting/ creating a CV

  • Access to health and other local services

Christmas 2021 Newsletter

Happy Christmas!

We hope this email finds you well, we can't believe we are almost at the end of 2021!

We have had a busy year - we are supporting many more students through a combination of our language and digital skills classes, with more due to start in the new year!

 

URGENT NEW YEAR LAPTOP APPEAL

Due to the huge demand and positive feedback following our Digital Skills Course pilot, we are looking to make the course more widely available by starting three new classes in the new year! The courses will be offered free of charge to asylum seekers, refugees and other vulnerable migrants across South Yorkshire.

To make this possible, we urgently need to buy five sets of headphones, five laptops, and a projector. We hope you can help!

A new set of headphones will cost £5.

A new laptop will cost £300.

A new projector will cost £200.

Any donation, big or small, will have a huge impact and enable us to keep providing such valuable classes.

To donate to our appeal please visit our GoFundMe page and give whatever you can.

As regular supporters may know, we work alongside Snowdrop Project to deliver classes to their clients who are survivors of human trafficking. We have recently started to run our Digital Skills course with some of the ladies there. It was wonderful to receive this feedback from one of the staff members there:

“One of our long-term clients, who has mobility problems and struggles with her mental health, has attended the IT classes. Over the years we have supported this client, she has struggled to engage with community activities, she faces many barriers and a lot of these are internal barriers, such as fear of meeting new people. This client has attended IT classes both weeks. She has managed to make her own way to the building and arrived for her class on time. This has not always been easy for our client and so it quite rightly feels like a massive achievement. Our client seemed so excited and told us today that she learnt how to type and delete things. She reported feeling confident to attend because the classes were held at the Snowdrop Project and so she felt safe. She also said the teacher has been very helpful.”
— Snowdrop Project Staff Worker
 

A huge THANK YOU to Together For Sheffield who have sponsored one of our Digital skills classes which will be running in the new year!

Could you, or the company you work for, sponsor one of our classes? Get in touch with Anna if you would like more information.

 
 

We want to thank you for your support over the last year and wish you a peaceful Christmas break, and a healthy and happy 2022.

Summer 2021 Newsletter

We have reached the end of another challenging academic year, and we want to thank you for your support throughout.

We have seen such determination and resilience from our students, and have been delighted at the progress they have made. Our teachers and volunteers have worked tirelessly to provide a high standard of learning in a difficult and ever changing environment, and we are extremely grateful for all their hard work. 

 

We hope you will enjoy reading this newsletter, and joining with us as we celebrate the success of our students. 

It's always great to receive positive feedback from our students and to hear how much they have improved over the course of their lessons. This has been particularly encouraging in a year when so much of our teaching has been online. Not all of our students were able to engage with our classes in this format, but for those who were able to attend regularly, their teacher saw an increase in their confidence as well as an improvement in their English. The students also benefitted from the social contact of these online classes.

 

It was wonderful to finally get back into the classroom after so long teaching online. Pictured below is one of our teachers, Lucy, with some of her students proudly displaying their certificates of achievement! A very big well done to them and all our students.

 

It's amazing to see that in spite of two disrupted academic years we are teaching so many more hours of classes! The more hours we are able to teach the more students we can reach. As we continue to grow we are looking for more teachers to join our team - if you think this could be you please get in touch!

 

After a successful pilot, we will be launching our Digital Skills classes in Rotherham, Doncaster and at the Snowdrop Project in September!

We are also in the early stages of developing a more intensive course, in partnership with the Refugee Council, tailored to meet the needs of the students. It is planned to be a more immersive, less classroom based, style of learning featuring trips and cultural experiences. 

 

Would you, or someone you know, be interested in becoming a volunteer language buddy, meeting with a student for an hour or two a week to support them with their language learning? Contact Anna to register your interest or to find out more!

 

Huge thanks to Sheffield Volunteering for donating these beautiful colouring sets to us! We were delighted to be able to use them as end of term gifts for our students.

 

Support us with your shopping!

Good Taste, The Sheffield Fair Trade Shop currently have us as one of their 'Shop Charities', this means that they will donate 5% of the cost of your purchases to our work every time you shop via their online shop. If you visit their shop in Broomhill, you can also support us by donating your loyalty points to us (£5 for each full loyalty card!) at no extra cost to yourself. 

Did you know that you can also support our work through your Amazon purchases, by registering Hope English School as your chosen charity on Amazon Smile. It works exactly the same way as usual but Amazon will donate a small percentage of your purchases to us. 

 

Are you interested in becoming a trustee?


We are looking for more volunteers to join our board of trustees, we especially welcome applications from people with lived experience of the asylum-seeking process, either through frontline work or direct personal experience. If you would like to find out more information about this please get in touch!