WITH LEARNING LANGUAGES THE WHOLE WORLD BECOMES HOME

Café Lingua was born of the project Language Voices, an Erasmus+ funded project spanning two years, ending in 2019. The object of Language Voices was to establish a free language table event to teach migrants and refugees the language of their host country by enrolling native-speaking community members as volunteer tutors. The aim was to bridge gaps in non-formal ways of host country language education and cultural understandings between newcomers and native residents. Language Voices was a very successful project and yielded from it Café Lingua in Brussels.

The birthplace of Café Lingua was in a café in Schaerbeek where it provided free non-formal language education to anyone interested in learning French, Dutch, English, Spanish, Arabic or Farsi. Eventually, at the end of 2019, it was deemed necessary to move the event to the refugee reception centre, Le Petit Chateau, where it would be more accessible by those in the most need. Since then Café Lingua grew exponentially. Until Covid it accommodated up to 80 newly arrived refugee learners and a rotation of up to 12 volunteers from a roster of 60, every Wednesday night and Thursday morning. Teaching tips and material for the tutors is supplied digitally via the Welcome home International website, and the operation has become a favourite of residents in the centre.