Thursday 29 June 2023

We were lucky enough to be invited to the Flavorite Let’s Learn English Cultural and Graduation Evening held by Warragul Community House.

This course brings together people from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) backgrounds to help them learn English in a conversational way. The program is sponsored by Flavorite which helped them provide a meal at the end of each class. Those meals helped build their sense of community, practice their skills, and make the classes more accessible for students who need to juggle the class with other responsibilities.

In this graduating class, we had students from Ukraine, Indonesia, Peru, Taiwan, Thailand and more. Each student gave a presentation in English. The topics covered their cultural customs, favourite foods from home, stories from their travels and even an original song written by one student who also played the guitar to accompany his singing.

Students presenting about their favourite foods brought them along to share with the class, including a delicious Thai green curry and lucuma cheesecake.

The students thanked their teachers with an incredible video compilation of the students talking about their experiences and gifted them flowers that they’d arranged amongst themselves. Each student received a certificate and a gift from their teachers in the presentation.

It was incredibly inspiring to see the confidence of the students, the connections they’d made and the incredible respect shared between the teachers, volunteers and students. It’s a great example of the wonderful work Warragul Community House is doing for their community, and the great work we see from Neighbourhood and Community Houses and Centres all around Victoria.