Integrating Refugees Through Language Learning

The UK has a serious language deficit issue that’s estimated to cost its economy a staggering £48 billion every year. It also faces considerable challenges around integration, which must be tackled if we’re to ever overcome the toxic rhetoric around Brexit which emerged from the recent European migrant and refugee crisis.

And that’s exactly what a recently launched social enterprise called Chatterbox proposes to do with a beautifully elegant solution. It uses technology to bring together the unique existing skills of those refugees with demand in the host nation by employing them to teach their own language and culture in their adopted country.

“Chatterbox teachers are doctors, lawyers, engineers and academics — highly skilled professionals with a lot to offer,” says Chatterbox founder Mursal Hedayat, who herself came to the UK as a refugee from Afghanistan. “It’s fantastic for them to engage in stimulating work whilst learning more about the way of life here,” she explains.

There are over 117,000 people with refugee status living in the UK, yet despite having above average levels of education and training, they are much more likely to be unemployed and in poverty. The way that government policy allocates them to a particular area often sees people housed in places where there are relatively few employment…