Doing my little bit for America - Volunteering at Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center (BCNC)

During my year here in Boston, I wanted to do something good for society so I decided to do some volunteer work. I came across BCNC which is a center in Boston Chinatown that does amazing work for immigrants. They offer English classes for adults, schooling for infants and other support for immigrants. I decided that I'd volunteer as an English Tutor.

What a wonderful way to give back to society, by helping an immigrant speak English and be more confident in America. This has real, meaningful, direct impact on a person's life. It is very difficult to be an immigrant in America especially if you cannot speak English. A lot of these people are too afraid to go out to a shop/restaurant/bank/post office and speak because they cannot understand and communicate - which is a very frustrating!

Since I myself am learning a foreign language, I understand exactly how hard it is to communicate in a different language :)

There were three long training sessions in October last year where we were given tips and guidelines on how to prepare a lesson plan to prepare us for our tutoring.

I started tutoring my tutee, Tina, in November. She is from China and came to live in Boston in 2011 after she got married. Although she has studied Accounting in China, not being able to speak English makes it very difficult to get a job here in America. So she wants to go to college so that she can get a job one day in either Accounting/Real Estate or maybe even open her own business. She is extremely hard working and driven.

We meet every Wednesday at 12:30pm for two hours at BCNC in Chinatown. The biggest challenge that immigrants have is pronounciation so we have been spening a lot of time on this. In Mandarin, there are no words with 'br' or 'ght' or 'kn' and their 'n's', 'r's' and 'l's' sound similar :)

Tina's teachers have told me that her pronounciation has improved a lot, so I'm glad that all our lessons are paying off :)

Tutor Appreciation Dinner 24 April 2013

It is National Volunteer Week this week. On Wednesday 24 April, I was invited by BCNC to a Tutor Appreciation Dinner. Apparently they have 40 tutors volunteering. It was wonderful to so many people giving of their time to help immigrants, one of them has even been tutoring at BCNC for 20 years - incredible! We had some delicious Chinese food and were treated to a performance by one of the volunteers who is a belly dancer.

 

 

My friend Lirong accompanied since we were allowed to bring a guest. Her husband is also studying at Harvard and I met her at the HSSPA Painting class. I have also been helping her prepare for job interviews and her English tests.

Each volunteer received a small token of appreciation from BCNC :) Thank you BCNC, however just by being able to make a difference in someone's life is big enough a reward! I will continue tutoring until we leave for SA.  Such wonderful memories.

I really respect organizations like BCNC, they are doing such good for the community. http://www.bcnc.net/

Here is a picture of the Chinatown Gate in Boston.

For more on Boston Chinatown http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinatown,_Boston