Home-Start Calderdale are to start the first ever bilingual volunteer training course, thanks to a grant from Children in Need

Home-Start Calderdale will soon be able to reach out to more families from ethnic communities, thanks to a Children in Need grant.

For the last ten years Home-Start Calderdale has been supporting families from the Black and Minority Ethnic community, but they have always struggled to recruit volunteers who could speak Urdu or Punjabi.

Linda Crowther, senior coordinator at Home-Start Calderdale said: "If emotional support was needed for these families, and English was not their first language, then we really were not able to provide the help they needed, which has been a real frustration. "

The Children in Need grant has allowed Home-Start Calderdale to recruit a new bilingual coordinator, Sanham Aurangzeb. She has already brought eight new volunteers to Home-Start  thanks to her language skills and knowledge of the Halifax Pakistani community. 

Linda said: "Thanks to Sanham, this barrier we have felt in the BME community is finally being broken  through."

There will be a new volunteer training course starting at Home-Start Calderdale in Spring 2011.

To find about more about volunteering for your local Home-Start click here.

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