COMBI: Piloting the course with migrants working in the care sector

Feb 8, 2018News

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The COMBI pilot course started on the 5th February 2018 in Urnieta, a village near San Sebastian (Spain). The pilot course is organised by Banaiz Bagara and Elhuyar, the two Basque partners of the project.

The aim of the pilot course is to test the Teacher Training Toolkit (TTT) and to make all necessary adjustments for the rest of the project. Pilot sessions engage migrants working, applying for work or having worked in the care sector. Another aim is to test the viability and receive feedback on the teacher training and the methodology developed in the TTT.

Ana Labaka Usabiaga from Elhuyar did the initial assessment and will do the final assessment in two weeks when the course finishes.

On the first day the pilot started with three participants – two Cuban women, working in the elderly care sector and one Spanish women (from Extremadura) who is a volunteer in a day clinic.

On the second day, other three students joined the class:

  • Liseth (Nicaragua)  who works as a caregiver in families since 7 years;
  • Mary (Nigeria)  that learns Spanish in the morning in adult education (Spanish adult school “Educación Permanente de Adultos” EPA). She already participated in another course from Banaiz Bagara last year. She is very motivated with Basque but has problems also with Spanish and with reading-writing skills (the perfect profile for COMBI project);
  • Lali (Peru) whom  has a caregiver title and told us that from next year on in residences and companies they will ask for a language profile, so she will start in an Euskaltegi in October but wants to profit already now (an example for the influence of language policies in the Basque country).

The Pilot course will have duration of 20 hours and during the course the participants will work on the different fields of the TTT.

COMBI – Communication competences for migrants and disadvantaged background learners in bilingual work environments  is co-funded by Erasmus+ KA2 Strategic Partnerships for adult education with the main aim  to develop innovative and inclusive/systemic practices and methods focused on acquiring communication competences in the languages required in the workplace.

It takes into consideration the multilingual reality of European regions. The aim of the method is not to acquire full competences in two or more languages, but to make sure that the regional language is taken into consideration as far as it fulfils language requirements in the workplace.

The project partnership holds together 6 organisations:

For further information, please contact Dario Ferrante, dario.ferrante@danilodolci.org.