November 19, 2010
Grant to help bridge the cultural gap
The Guadalupe Center, the Hispanic Ministry Office of the Diocese of Evansville, has received a Welborn Baptist Foundation grant of $30,000 to fund the project “Bridge Building through Language Acquisition.”
The center will team with LingoLynx LLC, Building Connections through Language, to implement Reality Spanish® classes oriented to pastoral workers, teachers and health care workers, and Reality Eng-lish® classes to Spanish-speakers.
LingoLynx LLC, has empowered participants through language skills and enhanced cultural understanding in Indiana since 2004. The project will begin with a three-day training Jan. 4-6 for bilingual people to learn to facilitate classes. Classes will then be offered by these trained facilitators to health care workers, teachers and parishioners who wish to bridge the cultural gap between English- and Spanish-speakers.
Hispanic immigrants began arriving in the Diocese of Evansville in the late 1980s and have settled primarily in four counties. The population continues to increase.
From the year 2000 to the year 2007, Dubois County’s Hispanic population increased by 86 percent, Daviess County by 74 percent, Spencer County by 42 percent and Vanderburgh County by 29 percent, according to the Pew Hispanic Center, www.pewhispanic.org).
Their arrival has created demographic shifts and sometimes social chasms between Hispanic and Anglo communities.
Reality Language® classes are described as a fun, creative and effective environment where new language can be learned and a new culture can be better appreciated. The program em-powers bilingual facilitators with new teaching skills and linguistic understanding, as well as giving Spanish speakers better life opportunities through improved English skills, and English speakers greater self esteem through successful, relevant second language acquisition.
Benedictine Sister Karen Durliat, director of the Guadalupe Center, was trained in the Reality Language® process in 2009 in Washington. She has taught three Reality Language for Law Enforcement® classes and one class to teachers. She will serve as a mentor for the new facilitators.
Anyone interested in applying to be a facilitator in the program should contact Sister Karen by Dec. 1. If anyone would like a school or parish to host a training or would like more information about this project, please call the Guadalupe Center, (812) 683-5212.