Who we are..

We all live in Middlesbrough, but only one of us was born here. As a group we speak English, Kurdish, Arabic and Turkish.  In the past, different people have worked as a teacher, an office computer manager, an engineer, a nurse, an interpreter, in the theatre and as an artist and sculptor.  Like most people we can all do a little bit of other types of work and some of us have children so we know what that‘s like.

How it all started

We began in August 2006 and had to learn the language of applying for funding very quickly.  We are still in the learning stage on this one but the sky is a bit clearer now.  We received our first funding in January 2007 from Awards for All and began the Saturday school in March 2007 in a local church hall.  Unfortunately this was too noisy for teaching though wonderful for the music (yes, music and dancing again) and there was no enclosed space outside for the younger children to play safely.

So we moved to Streets Ahead for Information on Parliament Road where we have grown in numbers and are feeling a bit squeezed.  Grateful but squeezed.  The funding from Awards for All has allowed us to rent an office, a classroom, office equipment, teaching and art materials and with extra funding from Streets Ahead for Information, pay for 5 volunteers to do an advice and guidance course to improve this service.

Ongoing commitments

We received further funding from the Tees Valley Community Foundation in September 2007 which is focused on providing resources for children and young people.  With this money we can buy more teaching equipment such as a camcorder, laminator, scanner and art materials.  These will allow us to increase the range and lifetime of our teaching resources and the children’s work.  We can fund the classroom for some time into the future with this fund but not the office.