History


In 1999, a group of immigrant families and Brown University students founded English for Action (EFA), in order to address the growing need for ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) classes in the Neighborhood of Olneyville, and at the same time, to create a community-based, participatory education model that integrates language learning with social change. Instead of viewing the need to learn English in isolation, the founders envisioned classes that make the explicit link between language and empowerment.

For EFA's first two years, we offered classes on a small-scale, grassroots level to fifteen adult learners in Olneyville. Since September 2001, we have successfully ran four programs that have served over three hundred learners: English for Action, an adult ESOL course taught at 4 different language levels; Our School, free, educational childcare for the children of EFA learners; Spanish for Action, community-based Spanish language classes; and VozMujer, an ESOL and leadership program for Latina immigrant women.

Our current activities include:

  • Providing 100 adult Latino immigrant learners with high quality, participatory English language education;
  • Serving 25 learner children with arts-based educational programming and mentoring;
  • Implementing the Facilitating Change Project, in which three former EFA learners are gaining teaching skills by team teaching English classes with experienced ESOL facilitators;
  • Partnership with medical students at Brown University Medical School to bring med students into EFA classrooms to talk about health issues, health care, and patient-doctor communication;
  • Partnership with the Center for Environmental Studies at Brown University to develop a community action and education project about pressing environmental health issues in the Olneyville community; and
  • Collaboration with several grassroots community organizations in Providence to form the Institute for Non-Traditional Leadership, a group that works for social justice by building solidarity and power among grassroots leaders in communities of color.

  

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