A group of Vodafone employees have volunteered for Carnegie Mellon’s Language Bridges Programme. They are teaching English to 30 migrant workers at the Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar (CMUQ) campus.
The employee charity outreach initiative comes under the umbrella of Vodafone Qatar’s “Better World” programme, the company’s corporate social
responsibility initiative.
The programme aims to contribute to community development in Qatar through several initiative, such as World of Difference and AmanTECH, Vodafone’s online child safety programme, among many others.
In collaboration with Qatar Foundation’s Reach Out to Asia, Language Bridges provides free Basic English language classes to migrant workers. With 2-hour sessions a week, the programme is designed to teach functional English that will enable the workers to conduct basic communication in the language.
The teachers involved in this programme are all volunteers, including students from CMUQ community volunteers from various corporate and academic entities in Qatar. Over 300 volunteers have taught with Language Bridges, and 700 learners have participated in the programme since 2010.
A Vodafone Qatar statement issued yesterday pointed out that currently, there are more than 1mn migrant workers in the country, and most of them are poorly skilled and employed in the service and construction industry. The language barrier triggers daily
communication issues.
Dana Haidan, head of corporate social responsibility and sustainability at Vodafone Qatar, said, “One of the aims we have for our CSR programme, Vodafone Better World, is to enable passionate selfless people to do good in the community and connect them to opportunities where they can reach out and help in any way possible.
“We are proud to see that through Language Bridges we have already started to make a world of difference in the lives of many in the migrant worker
community,” she added.
Volunteering teachers are expected to follow a very detailed curriculum designed by Professor Silvia Pessoa from Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar. The curriculum aims at making the lives of teachers easier because it requires very minimal teacher
preparation.
The progress of the initiative is reported online at http://languagebridges.wordpress.com/ and the programme’s Facebook page invites volunteers, fans and students to post their
comments.
The community can support this programme and make it a success by giving funds for training the teachers, providing an equipped training space for the students and donating
educational materials.

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