Welcome to Hannover
Language Training as a Vehicle for Literacy

About 6000 Bulgarian nationals live in Hannover (numbers of 2018-2019), some of them students or in academic professions, other employed in low-level jobs such as facility cleaning, food packaging, transportation or construction. Quite a considerable number of them have come from regions in Bulgaria where school education was not provided fully to them, or they are from cultural backgrounds where school attendance of as little as 1-3 years is frequent. Still many of them are in occupation, but they feel the need to improve their reading and writing skills.

Together with a local charity caring for cultural heritage of Bulgarians in Hannover (Bulgarien in Hannover e.V.), we organised a low-level reading and writing course which was combined with a German language course. In order to make attending the course easier also for workers and for mother who have to care for children, the course was organised in Mühlenberg, a neighbourhood where many immigrants live, amongst them also many Bulgarians. The teacher was of Bulgarian descent herself and provided the necessary linguistic and emotional bridges for the course attendants to feel welcome in the course. 

Watch our 5 minutes video documentary on this innovative course.

The video is availabe in several European languages.

  Select video from table here!