06 April 2009, East London Advertiser
FREE English language classes are being run for Bangladeshi women in London’s deprived East End to help them integrate.

The classes are organised by City Gateway with role play to create basic situations to learn simple phrases.

Around four-out-of-10 people in Tower Hamlets are Bangladeshi, the charity points out.

By Laura Wileman, Community Newswire

EDUCATION Language Tower Hamlets, 06 Apr 2009 - 09:30

A charity has launched a free English language class for women with little or no English skills in the Tower Hamlets area.

City Gateway's Women's Project gives women the chance to role play basic situations and learn simple phrases. The group said the idea was inspired by the large number of women looking to fill the limited places on their long term ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) courses.

City Gateway is a charity which links big businesses into community projects and itself runs a Women's Project, Youth Centre, Youth Training & Apprenticeships and a Social Enterprise Hub. A new initiative at their Women's Project is giving women with little or no English skills the chance to role play basic situations and learn simple phrases - later in the month volunteers from State Street Bank will help them launch a new community cafe at the site where individuals will get further opportunities to have practice conversations.

City Gateway Women's Project, inspired by the number of women looking to fill the limited places on their long term ESOL courses, this week launched a Creative English class aimed at getting local women talking.

Language barriers remain one of the most difficult to overcome obstacles for the multicultural population of Tower Hamlets and those who do not speak English often struggle to confidently make use of basic services such as their GP or library, even if these centers offer translators to them.

City Gateway Women's Project today ran a crazy and successful event, supported by the PCT's fund for obesity awareness.

'Spring In Your Step' was a family half term event open to the whole local community, run at our centre in Poplar. It was a low key event with minimal advertising but 181 still managed to find out about it and come along.

Today is International Women's Day and this week will see it marked through events all over the country. Our own women's project now has over 500 women registered and we saw 300 take courses with us in 2008, ensuring the centre is bustling with activity everyday of the week.

Ross Bentley, Personnel Today, August 2007

A team from MLS kicked off a decorating project at our women's project which also included volunteers from Bank of America and Finsbury PR.

The complete revamp is helping us tackle user feedback and prepare the centre for the launch of our new social enterprise cafe, run by the team at Flavour Gateway.

See the team in action here.

We still need more help at the centre and other volunteering opportunities - e-mail jerry@citygateway.org.uk

Test...