Getting ready for the second season of IT-classes for Immigrant Women

posted by terje in Misc

I would like to share some experience I have had recently with doing some volunteer community work, creating and running a computer class for Immigrant Women in Oslo.

Background
Last autumn my employer Steria had a vision of trying to help out in the local community by sharing some of the skills and resources the company possesses.
A local organization called the Church City Mission who does community work was contacted, and there were discussed different ways that the company might contribute.
The Church City Mission came up with the idea that we could hold computer classes for users of a center focusing on health and family-care they ran, with many immigrant women among the users.  
Many of whom are lacking basic computer skills.

An email was sent out to all Steria employees in Norway asking for people to contribute.
I decided to join in and see what this was all about.
At the first meeting with the volunteers I accepted the task of creating the class material, as well as holding the class for a group of Somali women (with an interpreter).
In parallel with this class we held classes in Arabic for Iraqi women and in Urdu for a group of Pakistani women, these classes where held by volunteer Steria employees who speak these languages. More