Tutor Reflections 2

Sifting flush on the smoggy thread of highway that links Melbourne to Ballarat, All Saints Anglican Church, has been home each Saturday for the past two and a half years to the Sudanese Australian Integrated Learning (SAIL) program where it has been transformed into a chaotic and vibrant place to learn. A place where 330 people converge every Saturday with the kind of devotion that the church it is held in can barely remember.

Started by Anna Grace Hopkins and Matthew Albert in 2000, two students from The University of Melbourne, then 19 and 20 respectively, the SAIL program had humble beginnings. Responding to a request from the Sudanese community, Hopkins and Albert started with just five school age students who were all from one family.

Thanks to the Department of Immigration, Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs' (DIMIA) the Sudanese community are Australia's fastest growing ethnic community. This is due to DIMIA's desire to ensure that the bulk of visas granted to refugees are to those who are processed offshore. Accordingly the Sudanese community in Melbourne has continued to swell, as has the numbers of SAIL attendees.

After initial advertisements for tutors, the SAIL program has been able to rely on word of mouth to spread information about the program and recruit tutors, resulting in tutor numbers that increase weekly. As volunteer staff retention rates are extremely high the program now boasts about 128 tutors and 200 students. 'The commitment of the tutors is quite amazing really,' says tutor Ally Collier, 'especially considering that the bulk of tutors are students who make it to SAIL by 10.30am every Saturday after very social Friday nights.'

As the size of the program has increased so too has its administrative infrastructure with volunteer support staff including three librarians, sixteen administration assistants, a web designer, a team of food preparation staff, fifty-six drivers and five coordinators now part of the team.

At its inception the program focussed on informal tutoring of students one-on-one or in small groups, concentrating on activities that were designed to improve reading, spelling, comprehension, pronunciation and help with homework. In April 2002, the program expanded to include services for the adult members of the community. In August 2002 home help services began, as did language support tutoring on Saturdays. The program, however, has provided critical support beyond what it offers in the area of English literacy. 'It not only helps with... English, but helps to build and maintain friendships... It's a meeting place for the Sudanese community [and] an excellent mentoring program' says Hopkins.

'The participants of the program have all experienced war, famine and disease in their homeland of Sudan prior to their acceptance into Australia as part of our offshore refugee intake. Family sizes (up to nine children), strained finances, language barriers and the kind of emotional trauma associated with war, loss, displacement and resettlement in a foreign county mean that students are very vulnerable and disadvantaged. They struggle educationally and emotionally, and are unable to enjoy the same opportunities for recreation and entertainment as most Australian children. Turning up every Saturday at the May Street Hall in Footscray is not only of an educational benefit to our students, but also a social benefit' says public relations assistant, Kevin Teoh.

The program, while maintaining its focus on language learning, has this year branched into a number of other areas and now includes Saturday afternoon classes in soccer, cooking, art, drama, Auslan (sign language), sewing and music. Arabic classes are also run for the tutors, as are talks on a range of topics relevant to the teaching of their students and broader refugee issues.

'This element of the program brings to life what we have intended from the beginning, that SAIL be an integrated learning program, where students are learning more than just English language skills, and tutors are also given a chance to learn from the Sudanese,' says Albert.

The SAIL program is supported by the Melbourne Anglican Foundation and relies solely on generosity of donations from the community, the Anna Wearne Trust and the Order of Malta Trust. In 2001, SAIL won the National Community Link Volunteer Award, chosen from a pool of 5000 nominated volunteer organisations from across Australia, and a City of Maribyrnong Civic Acknowledgement for Contributions to Education.

The reasons for the success of the program are clear. It is run in an uncomplicated and unbureaucratic manner by its relaxed coordinators. Tutors are given a lot of support in teaching methods and aides (the program now has a 3000 book library, all the result of donations) but are permitted to teach using whatever method best befits the student.

Speaking with tutors, however, gives the greatest insight into why the program works so well. Jane Nethercote, who is the driver of three girls aged between six and twelve and tutor for one girl, says 'I love the atmosphere at SAIL - everyone's there for the same reason - and I love looking up every so often from my tutoring and gazing around the hall - and all you see is this great group of people caught up in a mutual effort - people of every kind of race and colour, people of different ages, and you see that on this micro-level, people have such an amazing capacity to understand each other (or want to try to understand each other) and I start getting caught up wondering how the world would be if this were expanded to some macro level - and then some little kid breaks the moment by attempting chopsticks on the piano - but you get what I mean. I mean SAIL's not perfect - nothing is, and I'm not trying to gloss over the chaos and the difficulties, but it has a good heart.'

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