When Rita Madeira was growing up in Portugal, her family was too poor to buy the books she needed for school. In 1990, Madeira moved to the United States with only a fourth grade education and no English skills. She knew that her factory job was not where she wanted to stay. At South Providence’s Genesis Center on Potters Avenue, Madeira was able to build her skills in English and math as well as prepare for the test that would qualify her to train for a job as a Certified Nurse’s Assistant (CNA). Today, Madeira is a CNA working with Alzheimer’s patients at the Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Providence.
“I never thought I could do this, but look at me – I’m doing it,” said Madeira.
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Genesis means beginning, and a new beginning is exactly what the Genesis Center provides its students – over 5,000 since the center’s opening in 1982. Founded by the Catholic diocese of Providence to assist area Southeast Asian immigrants and refugees by offering English language and citizenship classes, today the mostly grant-funded agency has developed into a multi-service community center. It offers classes in English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL), computer literacy, health and nutrition and food service, among many others.
The center’s food service training program, developed in 1993 in cooperation with Johnson & Wales University, offers students instruction in food preparation, readying them for entry-level food service jobs. Food service students, under chef -instructor Michael Macioci, are offered lessons in practical application as well; they run the Genesis snack bar, and serve breakfast and lunch for its students and on-site day care. Graduates of the 14-week program enter the workforce with education and experience.
“And we have our own catering company,” Macioci interjected, pausing from a lecture.
Neighborhood teenagers are spending their summer at the center as part of a program called WERX. Their instructor, Brown University student Tim Barsky, and Genesis director of youth and adult ESOL programs Sally Gabb are guiding the students in their observations of local businesses, identifying the needs of their South Providence neighborhood.
“We’ve been talking about what business we would own, how we would run it, what we would do if we got competition, and how we would manage it,” said one.
A walking tour of the area’s Elmwood Avenue retail district sparked a discussion among the teens. The students were asked to note what businesses they saw, and what they noticed was missing.
Their observations of the neighborhood gas stations, nightclubs and restaurants revealed an important omission:
“A supermarket,” said another. “People have to leave the neighborhood to go to the grocery store.”
After a series of such exercises and discussions, students will develop a plan for and run their own business, in addition to holding two-day-a-week internships at businesses in the area. The project will continue in the fall with meetings once a week after school.
“We’ve done this program before, but this is the first year we’re actually going to develop a product,” Gabb said.
But Genesis’s founding goal is the lingual and cultural education of non-English speakers.
“Our focus is getting people the language skills they need to get into the workforce,” said Patricia Clarkin, director of Genesis’s workforce literacy programs. “We look at students not just as students, but as workers.”
According to Clarkin, it takes about two years of language instruction for an individual to be comfortable enough with English that she or he can effectively apply the language on the job.
Someone who is new to the United States may have poor or no English language skills, but “people come with skills and abilities that we can help translate into the workforce,” she said. “Some of these people have a very high level of education in their home countries. We have Russians who are engineers, but they don’t have the English skills.”
One of the issues the new residents face is a lack of total immersion.
“It’s harder for people to learn English because there’s a community to support their first language,” said Gabb.
Many companies hire bilingual managers and supervisors to accommodate employees’ native languages.
“Our students tell us all the time they don’t have the opportunity to speak English,” Clarkin said.
The center offers in-house sessions, for example the day-long ESOL/computer literacy course that is taking place this summer, as well as ones held on-site at cooperating companies.
Approximately 60 Hope Webbing employees in Cumberland, the majority of whom are from Portuguese and Spanish-speaking countries, have participated in Genesis ESOL programs over the past three years, according to Hope Webbing vice president of human resources Dorothy Mattiello.
“We engaged in this as a business venture,” she said. “We wanted to teach workplace English.”
Hope’s failed in-house attempt at language training led the company to Genesis, and the result is clearly collaborative.
“We pay half of their time and the employee donates half their time,” said Mattiello.
Mattiello said that the ESOL training gives workers the confidence to pursue U.S. citizenship and become more involved at work, but that the workers aren’t the program’s only beneficiaries.
“Hope Webbing benefits because we have a trained workforce,” she said. “A trained workforce gives us the opportunity to promote people.”
Graduation is considered an important Hope Webbing event. The company’s top executives always attend.
“It’s a major accomplishment,” she said. “This year, there wasn’t a dry eye in the place.”
