Our project ‘Rhyme Time Sessions’ is a weekly activity in which volunteers from our society engage with single mother refugees with babies (under 12 months) to help improve their English conversational skills. Every week we run a different activity to keep both the mothers and babies interested and engaged. 

To name a few examples, one week we ran a food-themed session in which volunteers used flashcards to help mothers learn some common food names. Following this, we sang some rhymes related to food and the babies started dancing and cheering! Furthermore, recently, we ran a session based on body parts and then taught the participants ‘Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes’ which was a lot of fun for us all. 

In some other sessions, the focus is less on learning set words on specific themes but rather focusing on informal conversational English. We do this through crafts/painting activities. Hence, the mothers are able to practice small talk in a more fun, relaxed setting. 

 The project, which was indeed an inaugural project set up only this year, has been successful. We are pursuing STAR’s mission in helping refugees to gain confidence and have a better integration into society. The mothers have really loved the sessions!  We have had several accounts of the mothers informing us that they not only look forward to the weekly sessions since they are incredibly fun, but that the sessions have also substantially improved their English. 

Of course, there have been some hiccups to the project. Firstly, the venue only accommodates a maximum of 10 mothers and 5 volunteers per session. We would like our project to have a wider impact and are perhaps hoping to switch the project to a different and larger site so that we can further enhance our impact. This is something we hope to address in the next academic term going forwards. 

The Alec Dickson grant has been incredibly beneficial as it has enabled us to purchase the necessary pencils, paper, colouring utensils and much more to run the sessions. It has also helped substantially with the transport costs to and from the venue to campus. 

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