BY CAITLIN ANDREWS
PHOTOS BY ROBERT ORTIZ
Language learning opens doors Meelia Center sees high demand for English classes as a way to access everyday necessities
S
aint Anselm College has long offered community services as part of its educational vision for students. For over a year, that mandate has included a more practical education for refugees and immigrants. The Meelia Center for Community Engagement, a program of Saint Anselm’s, began offering adult education courses for English for speakers of other languages in October 2023 through a partnership with the International Institute of New England, a refugee and immigrant resources organization. The classes are focused on career readiness, college preparation and functional skills like how to fill out forms, make a medical appointment and read grocery prices when shopping. Demand for the service was immediate and grew as the program expanded its outreach efforts, says Joseph Gilbert, the IINE’s associate director of ESOL. As of late December, the waitlist stood at 200 people despite the addition
24 603Diversity.com | Spring 2025
of a second class last January. “We thought we’d be able to expand with the Meelia Center and add some more seats to knock this out,” Gilbert says, referring to the waitlist. “But the opposite happened … we were tapping into a population of people who previously weren’t aware of or looking for services that are now looking for that.” The rising interest comes as New Hampshire’s demographics change: 86,751 people identified as foreign-born residents in the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2022 American Community Survey, a nearly 50% increase from 2012. About 8% of New Hampshire residents speak a language other than English, with 36% speaking Spanish and 15% of those speaking French. The majority of non-English speakers live in Hillsborough County. The majority of Meelia Center’s English language learners are Spanish and Ukrainian speakers, but a scattering of Haitians, Congolese and Central and South