Tullamore Lions Club seeks volunteers to help teach English to Ukrainians
An initiative by Tullamore Lions Club to teach English to the Ukrainian community has proved to be such a success that they are now seeking volunteers to assist with the twice weekly classes.
The classes, which take place every Tuesday and Thursday night in the Offaly Volunteer Centre on Bury Quay, have a regular weekly attendance of over 30 people, with just two tutors, Lions Club members Larry Fleming and Malachy O’Connor. The duo are being ably assisted by a member of the Ukrainian community, Oksana Nych, who worked as an English teacher in her native Ukraine before she was forced to flee to Ireland after the Russian invasion.
The English classes are the brainchild of Malachy, whose work as a food industry business consultant took him to the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv in 2018, and resulted in him making frequent trips to the city until the end of 2021. During that time he picked up what he would describe as “a limited command” of both the Russian and Ukrainian language, so when the war broke out and refugees began arriving in Ireland he was just as eager as everyone else to assist the new arrivals in any way he could.
“We were discussing ways to help the Ukrainians at a Lions Club meeting and I felt that if any of them wanted to get a job the first thing they would need to know was how to speak English, there was a gap there, so we decided to teach them basic English skills on a voluntary, basis,” he says.
With retired principal of Ballinamere National School, Larry Fleming on board, the two Lions Club members were given a room free of charge in Tullamore Library until Christmas. “The numbers attending have been rising steadily, and from the very first class we found the Ukrainian students really eager to learn,” says Larry.
Such is the willingness to learn that students “insist on being given homework every week”, according to Larry Fleming, who added: “Some of them ever bring along their children because they don’t have childminders, so we could probably run a toddlers club as well if we had the manpower to do it."
When a new influx of Ukrainians arrived in Tullamore before Christmas the English classes had to be divided into two groups, one for beginners and one for those who were a bit more advanced. “Most of those who came to us in the first weeks had no English a tall, but they were very quick to pick it up, so the original group were very well advanced by Christmas and then we began to get a whole load of new people who had no English so we had to split them up,” explains Larry Fleming.
Larry and Malachy are now seeking volunteers to come on board to assist with the English classes and say they need people who can either lead a class or are willing to assist individual students. "While a knowledge of the Russian or Ukrainian language would be great, it's not essential," points out Malachy.
Classes takes place from 7pm to 8pm every Tuesday and Thursday night, and anyone wishing to help out can email their contact details to Tullamore Lions Club at: contact@tullamorelionsclub.com
As well as running the English classes, members of Tullamore Lions Club made a donation of €10,000 last year to assist the people of Ukraine.