Warwick Unitarians are joining in a partnership of volunteers from the Quakers from the Quaker Meeting almost next door and the Catholics from St Mary Immaculate, just down West Street to offer conversation and friendship to foreign refugees on Monday mornings in the Quaker Meeting House from 10.30 to midday.
From 6th March, this collaborative enterprise will be offering help to refugees and others who have arrived in the town but find that they face obstacles because of their relatively poor language skills.
English may be recognised the world over as a lingua franca and the passport to international communication, but in practice conversational skills are often very difficult to pick up. Many who have travelled to the UK with high expectations find that life here is not as easy for them as they might have hoped because they cannot express themselves as readily as they would like in everyday conversation even if they have studied the formalities of the language at school.
To this end volunteers from the three Church groups, whatever their different approaches to their faiths, have come together to offer a Conversation Café where people can gather for a time to enjoy practising their English with native speakers in an uncritical and encouraging way over a cup of coffee.
The Café will be free and hopefully informal, with young children welcome to come with their parents and a selection of games and activities on hand to facilitate conversation.
Anyone interested in knowing more about this initiative should talk to Jenny Burns.