The Diplomat
The director of the Instituto Cervantes, Luis García Montero, and the representative in Spain of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Sophie Muller, signed yesterday the first collaboration agreement between the two entities to help foreign refugees learn Spanish in Spain.
The final objective of the general protocol of action signed yesterday is to develop programs that facilitate such learning to refugees and other persons under the mandate of UNHCR in Spain, with teaching materials adapted to their linguistic needs.
Luis García Montero said after the signing that this initiative “has to do with the ethical dimension of culture” and with the work of the Instituto Cervantes for language teaching adapted to different groups, as it already does with specific Spanish courses for doctors or inmates in prisons, among other groups of students with their own particularities. For her part, Sophie Muller insisted on the importance of this agreement since “language is fundamental for the integration of these people and for their social and economic protection”.
The cooperation between Cervantes and UNHCR’s representation in Spain has been put into practice immediately with the Spanish course that the Institute has been teaching since yesterday at its headquarters to sixteen Afghan and Syrian refugees. Thirteen women and three men of these nationalities have begun to receive this training that will facilitate their social and labor integration in Spain. All of them have Spanish levels equivalent to A2 or B1, and in addition “they are educated people, with a high level of cultural training,” explained Sophie Muller.
The pilot course, with a duration of 30 hours, will be taught during these two weeks (until March 17) with materials from AVE Global (Aula Virtual de Español). At its conclusion, the refugees will participate in a collective reflection on the development of this action, in order to improve it if necessary and turn this pilot course into another type of Spanish course for specific groups.
