Helping with more than just the books
Changing lives and community with each page
AN AFTERNOON homework program is delivering to Toowoomba more than just academic excellence.
It’s teaching tolerance and harmony as students of all ages and diverse cultural and religious backgrounds get together each Tuesday at the Humeridge Homework Help program.
Ross Saville started the program seven years ago when a mother-of-four from South Sudan approached him, asking to help her children with English.
Now, more than 80 students meet at Humeridge each Tuesday to study and socialise.
Pastor Saville said among the first students to get help was a new arrival in Australia entering Year 11, and given an assignment on Shakespeare.
He said she worked hard during the program and had gone on to get her nursing degree and now worked at Toowoomba Hospital.
But it’s more than academia in focus, he said.
“It gives them a sense of being welcome and wanted,” he said.
“As they improve, it gives them more motivation to keep trying and keep turning up.”
Among the current cohort is Naheeda Nouroz Ali, 17, born in Pakistan but raised in Afghanistan, who moved with her family to Australia in June 2016.
With English as a second language and a vastly different education system, Ms Nouroz Ali got help and now aims to study medicine when she graduates from Harristown State High School this year.
The program, she said, was “really special”.
“Everyone has respect for each other and do the hard work with getting along with each other and so many people with different religious background and different cultures,” she said.
“Everyone just gets along very well and builds the culture, and shows the community what it’s like to be united and together.”