Author: cjmcdeavitt

Dave and Cherie got married January 28, 2017! Dave teaches English and keeps the Zawita language center functioning well with his handyman skills. He is learning Behdini (on top of his fluency in Turkish) and he joined the New Bridges board of directors in the fall of 2017, too.

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November and December 2016 brought new short-term teachers to Zawita! Chris and Anita (from California) and JuanJo & Lau, Nelly, and Karol (from Costa Rica) taught Book A and Book E students in Zawita and enjoyed touring at the Beautiful Bridges in Zakho in their free time.

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In October 2016, Grant and Julie taught in our first (free) English club. Students came and went as they wanted and had a variety of lessons and topics. No certificates were given.

On September 30, 127 neighbors, former students, and friends from all four major cities in N. Iraq joined us and our team of volunteers for Dave and Cherie’s engagement party! Dave will become our new Director in 2017 after they return from their wedding travels.

In July we welcomed new teammates from New Zealand!

Twenty-seven students joined us for a fantastic two-month English course July – September.

March 25 we decorated our center and invited former students, neighbors, and members of our community ages 10 and up to join us for our Nawroz-Passover-Easter Open House. It was so fun! Cherie opened the party by telling the three stories. Then we divided up into small groups to play theme-based games like Bingo and “Thieves”. Others played dominoes and those who had good English had a stimulating theme-based discussion.

In recent months, local school teachers and other government employees haven’t been receiving full salaries. As a result, fewer people can afford to take English classes. As a team, we wanted to bless our community during this time of economic difficulty, so we taught a free one-month English class to school teachers from 6 schools in 4 towns at Medresa Kajeen during the month of March. We all enjoyed it!

We opened our language learning center in Zawita on November 23, 2015! The town leader and village elders leader blessed us with their presence and cut the ribbon; our friend, Javeen, provided the music; our new teachers and future New Bridges colleagues helped us host the party; and about 60 townspeople celebrated with us. Registration for our pilot course was held November 24-28 and classes began with 3 teachers and 12 students in 3 levels on November 28.

We signed a 4-year lease on a fantastic building for our New Bridges Language Learning Center in Zawita. It’s just up the hill from the bakery in the main market, has plenty of parking on the street, has a good-sized courtyard, and has a fabulous view of the tree-studded rocky hills.

  We’re furnishing our reception area, two classrooms, and the director’s office. Our signs are nailed to the wall, our business cards are making their way into the hands of potential students, and news about our Language Center is getting out!  We’ve made good progress on the paperwork for our business license with the Kurdish government but we still have a ways to go before we can submit the package for approval.

Our staff is living on the second floor. Should we need to in the future, we could expand to a total of 6 classrooms and 2 community rooms.

We completed the Arabic-English Literacy book and resources today! Congratulations to our translators and their teams for all their hard work on this challenging task!