Summer 2022 Newsletter

Welcome to our summer newsletter!

As we reach the summer holidays, we are delighted to be able to look back on such a busy and successful year! It's been so great to have a more normal year, teaching regularly face-to-face and being able to meet together for our admin days too.
We have wonderfully seen both our student and staff numbers grow, moved to a new office, revamped our website and had some successful fundraising campaigns!

Over the past academic year, we have seen real growth in the number of classes we are able to teach as well as the number of students attending them. We have recently employed three new teachers, Viktorija, Jonathon and Josie, as well as volunteer teaching assistants, Craig and Laura, to help meet this demand.
There has been particular demand for our services from local people who are hosting Ukrainian refugees, and as a result started our 'New Arrivals' classes to meet this need.
We were also delighted to see great growth in our Digital Skills provision, from running our pilot course last year, we have run eight 12-week courses across four different locations throughout the year - amazing!

We have moved to a new office and now have a space which we are able to use as a classroom! We have been using this space to run our 'New Arrivals' courses which has been attended by Ukrainian refugees. We are pleased to announce that we have been able to secure funding to continue to run these in September.

Our new office address is:

178 Shoreham Street,

Sheffield,

S1 4SQ

We walked 2029 miles!!

May saw us complete our Walk a Mile Challenge and raise £1,987 through this event! An amazing achievement, well done and thank you to everyone who took part.

Thank You Lowfield Primary School!

The children at Lowfield Primary School got involved in our 'Walk a Mile' challenge and collectively walked an amazing 545.8 miles and raised a huge £721.47! A massive well done and thank you from all of us!

They invited Anna to celebrate with them at their Jubilee party, where she enjoyed attending as one of their VIPs!

Team hellos and goodbyes

We've welcomed some new members to our teaching and volunteering teams!

Viktorija teaches our 'New Arrivals' class and is able to use her own experience of emigration to fully appreciate the importance of language learning for integration, employment, improved quality of life and contribution to society.

With over 8 years experience as a qualified ESOL teacher, Jonathon has joined our team after a period of living and teaching English is the Arab world. He is enthusiastic and absolutely loves hearing and learning about the cultures of the students he’s teaching.

We have also welcomed Craig and Laura into our team as volunteer teaching asistants as well as Isla who is our new admin volunteer!

The end of this year has also been a time for us to say "goodbye and good luck" to two of our wonderful teachers who are moving on to new jobs - Luz and Tom we will miss you and wish you the very best for your futures!

New Giving Info

We have recently changed our giving platform to CAF bank. We hope this will make it easier for people to give and for us to claim Gift Aid on donations. If you are a regular giver expect us to get in contact with you to talk about switching your direct debit over. If you do not already support our work financially, and would like to, please visit the give section of our website.

We hope you have a lovely summer and we look forward to sharing more with you in the Autumn term.

Walk a Mile in 6 easy steps!

This is the perfect opportunity to get active and raise money for Hope English School. To keep it simple, we’ve developed a 6 step plan to help you join in with this challenge!

Join us for our first group walk on Monday 2nd May, 11am at Endcliffe Park cafe!

All the links you need to get involved are at the bottom of the page…

Sign up here:

Make your donation here:

Download the App here:

Join our Facebook group here:

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