Pt Augusta YCW IELTS Classes

Miguel is an international student from Peru who has a qualification in industrial engineering from his country and is studying a project management course in Australia. For his skill assessment as an industrial worker which is required to validate his skill from his country, he had to take the IELTS exam. He prepared and successfully completed it and also got a positive outcome for migration purposes. Miguel works at Sundrop Farm in Port Augusta where he is seeking his job as an Industrial Engineer and his skill assessment would help him apply for the job.

Maria, one of the seasonal workers, was in regular communication with Miguel and she asked Miguel to help her with IELTS class so she can apply for a skill shortage visa and continue to work at Sundrop. Miguel was not sure how he could help her in the beginning as he thought it was a huge undertaking for him, on his own. 

Miguel along with some other young workers from Port Augusta attended the YCW National Action Conference held in Adelaide in May. Miguel said, during the two days session he was able to learn how other young workers were organizing action to better their and others’ reality. Inspired and motivated by the same, he proposed the action with the rest of his YCW group which included Sam, Vy and Lyla on their way back from the national action conference to Port Augusta. To which the group supported the idea and together with Fr Jim, who had invited them to attend the action conference, started planning for running an IELTS session for seasonal workers in Port Augusta.

Miguel made a flyer and went to meet his manager for support to promote the action with the workers. The manager took the copy of the flyer and printed and visited every worker and asked them to participate. Miguel was not aware of the promotion that his manager did, he was expecting it to be promoted on the notice board. When he didn’t see the flyer on the notice board, he asked the manager and then the manger mentioned he thought it was great to support Miguel and his team effort and to make it worthwhile he promoted it individually and he was looking at 25 people to participate.

Miguel later involved Kabi and Georgia as well in developing the action. The Port Augusta group is now running IELTS preparation classes for the seasonal migrant workers from Timor Leste, Vanuatu, Kiribati Island. 51 of them meet regularly on Tuesday for 2 hours class run by YCW members, where each YCW member along with Fr Jim takes charge of running each of four module (Reading, Writing, Speaking and Listening) in the four corners and the workers rotate their turn in each section to practise. They are also given an assessment to complete and the YCW members prepare and check the assessment. They have created a WhatsApp group to be in regular communication with all the seasonal workers from the farm and Miguel is moderating the group.

Miguel mentioned that during the initial test, they realized that their level of English was very weak and they needed more support and practice but the seasonal worker only have 2 months of ViSA remaining and they need to achieve overall 5 and not less than 4 in each band. The class was later supported by  a volunteer English teacher who was a contact of the local parish (All St Catholic Church).

When asked why Miguel and his group wants to support the workers, he said, it’s what he is called upon to do, to help others when it’s in one capacity and better their reality as he is also working on making his reality better to get a job as an industrial worker. He knows how important this work is for him for his migration pathway and to settle and it’s the same for the seasonal workers. The reality of seasonal workers was they needed to meet English requirements for their VISA purpose and so did he. Since he has already taken charge to better his reality, it was his commitment to better the reality of the seasonal workers. YCW Port Augusta group meets every Thursday in presence of Fr Jim as a mentor.