Charity awarded £10k lottery funding

A charity which focuses on providing English for speakers of other languages (ESOL) in Rochdale has received £10,000 of lottery funding.

Adult Community ESOL (ACE) was formed as a charity in March this year.

The charity was instigated by Jane Georgiou at Adult Community Training (ACT) because she had noticed the overwhelming need for ESOL in the borough.

ACE has been awarded £10,000 Awards for All, Lottery funding to supply “ESOL Learning Lunches” twice a week for the next 12 months.

The lunches are to give people from different community groups an opportunity to get together over lunch to discuss relevant topics, issues and interests.

The funding will be used to pay for room hire, food and the provision of an ESOL tutor.

Lisa DeCoza, Volunteer Manager of the charity, said: “We are really looking forward to holding the lunches; I think they will be a benefit to the community, not just the ESOL community but other communities too.

“The emphasis is on informal language learning and breaking down barriers between the different community groups.”

The charity’s mission statement is: “For the benefit of the public, to advance education among adults generally, particularly but not exclusively among those persons for whom English is a second language.”

The first lunch takes place today (Thursday 30 September 2010) at the Adult Community ESOL centre on Newgate and subsequent lunches will run on a Monday and Thursday of each week at varying locations.