News & Blog: Learner Stories
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My name is Gonzalo Gonzalez.
I am from Guatemala. I was 19 years old when I came to America. I work for Ventra. I live near Buchanan elementary school. I am married and have 5 children. They are 3-5-7-9 and 11.
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When we first profiled Ahmed Abdo in January 2017, he was preparing for a plant-wide layoff at work and studying to become a U.S. citizen. Since then, he’s made significant progress toward his goals as he continues to study with both the tutoring and workplace English programs at the Literacy Center. I sat down with him again this month to talk about his journey and his next steps.
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Last week, we celebrated with Pedro de Ingunza Aguilar as he graduated from our Adult Tutoring Program. After just eight months of working alongside his tutor, Julie Gendler, Pedro reached the 9th grade reading level! He reports that now he can communicate better at work, pronounce words better, and understand what people say.
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Rosa Chen originally came to the Literacy Center for help with her English language skills. She quickly discovered, however, that we had many additional resources to help her pursue her goals.
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Sitting down for her interview, Zina shows off her new badge from Spectrum Health.
“When I got my badge, [my sons] were so excited. They were kissing it.”
When we last reported on Zina, she was attending Kent ISD’s Beckwith Adult Education with the long-term goal of becoming a nurse. She was doing all of this while raising her two sons with her husband and providing childcare at her sons’ school.
Today, Zina is excited to talk about her accomplishments. As of late, she has many. She is now a mother of three, she has a new certification, and she has a new job.
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Charles came to the Literacy Center of West Michigan to improve his reading and writing skills. In his early career, Charles was skilled in electronic and computer work. Despite having difficulty reading manuals, he figured out how to do the work by trial and error. This allowed him to mask his difficulties with reading.
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Fatos, Apo, and their two sons moved to the United States from Istanbul. Before coming here, Fatos and Apo were business partners in their home country. Given her experience as a business owner, Fatos was able to quickly spot a need in West Michigan’s business community.
“When I came to here… I did not see that a restaurant had fresh and homemade food.”
Together, they began to design their restaurant and café: Café de Miro. However, they faced a few barriers.
“I can’t open one of these stores,” Fatos says, “because I don’t speak English too well.” That’s when Fatos and Apo came to the Literacy Center.
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When Larry and Coromoto visited the U.S. in 2017, they planned to stay for 15 days. However, the instability in their home country of Venezuela was worsening by the day, and their son, a doctor who had been practicing medicine here for 20 years, persuaded them to stay in Grand Rapids.
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If I could have three wishes they would be the following:
For my 1st wish is that poverty would disappear in the world, because I see people who have nothing to eat.
My 2nd wish would be to remove the hatred people have about the differences of races. People should be able to see each other regardless of the color of their skin, and help each other.
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I recently became interested in eating healthy foods. I have been thinking of having a garden. Then a friend told me about a place where there is a community garden sponsored by church. I was able to rent a small plot. I was very excited because I have a garden of my own.
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Monika Skripal’s motivation for practicing her English language skills always comes back to one thing: family. As the mother of 
two young daughters, Monika is using her English daily to advocate for their needs and to support their education. In fact, it was through their school – West Godwin Elementary – that Monika first heard about the parent-focused English classes offered through the Literacy Center’s Family Literacy Program.
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For Lili and her husband Omary, literacy is a family affair.
The couple, both born in the Congo, struggled to find jobs in West Michigan that would support their family of five and 
provide meaningful work. They each felt that their English literacy levels limited their ability to work in their desired fields—Omary as an electrician and Lili in healthcare.
That’s when Omary discovered the Literacy Center. He enrolled in the Construction Core program, a partnership with the Literacy Center and Grand Rapids Community College’s M-TEC. Soon after, Lili enrolled in a similar class for Certified Nurse Aid (CNA). Both of these classes taught the necessary job skills with the support of an English language instructor from the Literacy Center.
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A Second Chance at a Dream: Rachida's Story
Rachida was born in Algeria, and always dreamt of working in the very competitive healthcare field in her country. Instead, 
Rachida graduated with a degree in Marketing and took a position as an administrative assistant in the Ministry of Environment and Renewable Energy.
When Rachida moved to Grand Rapids in December of 2017 to join her husband, she saw an opportunity to change her career. It was a second chance for her dream: to start from the beginning of her journey into the healthcare field.
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My name is Franciel. I am from Venezuela which is the country in South America near Columbia and Brazil. I have two kids: Santiago and Andres. Santiago is 9 years old, he is in 4th grade and he loves to play soccer. Andres is 7 years old. He is in 2nd grade and he likes to swim and play Legos all time.
My husband’s name is Jose Luis Rivas. We have been married for 12 years. He likes to wake up early and read the bible, while he drinks his coffee. We met in college UPEL-IPB (pedagogical).
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After dedicating her time to raising her children for several years, Anna Jean Cater decided that she needed to do 
something for herself. She was certified as a math teacher in her home country of the Philippines, and had worked as a cashier at Meijer for a few years between her move to Grand Rapids and the birth of her first child, but she knew that she wanted a new career. She said, “I want to start where my weakness is, which is English.” A friend told her about the Literacy Center of West Michigan, and she enrolled in an advanced blended classroom/online ESL course. During that class, she improved her English, earned a Silver National Career Readiness Certificate, and through our online software, learned about various careers and how to navigate technology systems.
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Minh was born in Vietnam and came to the United States when he was just 12 years old. A straight-A student in Vietnam,
Minh describes himself as an “ambitious guy” and a go-getter. Since coming to the United States, he’s been a student at GRCC and GVSU, a manager at Walgreens, and an international businessman. He is now a Quality Supervisor at Praxis Packaging Solutions in Grand Rapids.
The path to his current role at Praxis took some time. Minh started in the Production Control department before applying for an accounting supervisor position. At that point, his work ethic was evident, and it caught the attention of Praxis’ CEO, Rick King. The only barrier inhibiting Minh’s career path? His English language skills.
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Three days a week, Baldo gets up before dawn to attend an English class at 5 AM before his work shift begins. The two-
hour class is held for Baldo and 20 of his colleagues at their workplace, Kent Companies.
Baldo’s English class is part of the Literacy Center’s Customized Workplace English program that provides customized classes on site at local companies and businesses. The classes are designed around the work that learners encounter at their job, and are offered at times that are convenient for the employees. For Baldo, this means coming to English class before his shift so that he can learn the English he needs communicate with other workers and succeed at his job.
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Banza Mukalay grew up in Congo, the second largest country in Africa. After attending school for 12 years, he graduated 
as a mechanic in 1996. Banza got married after high school and a year later, two major things happened: he and his wife became pregnant with a girl, and a war began.
Banza and his wife escaped the war while his wife was pregnant and hid in a neighboring village. Once the war was over and his home town of Kalemie went through a regime change, Banza’s family moved back home. The peace did not last long, and a new war began in 1998. It was at that point that Banza and his mother, wife, child, brothers, and sisters, fled across Lake Tanganyika into Tanzania.
On November 6, 1998 Banza and his family became refugees and were sent to live in the refugee camp. He would live there for 15 years, and three of his four children would be born in the refugee camp. During that time, he worked as a security guard for World Vision, a social worker for the International Rescue Committee (IRC), and was ordained as a pastor by the United Methodist Church. Banza led a church in the refugee camp for two years before finally gaining access to the United States.
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My name is Maria. I’m from Mexico and I came to U.S.A. when I was 19 years old. At that time I had only been married for 1 week.
My dream was to have a family. When I came to the U.S.A. it was so hard for me because everything was new; new people, new country, different traditions and everything new. I missed a lot my family and friends. The time was passing and I accustomed through the years.
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Now that I know what vacation is, life seems to be a whole lot better. There was a time when I didn’t know what
vacation was. My father was Texas born and met my mother on the other side of the Rio Grande in Mexico. So before I was born, my father would bring up immigrants from Texas to pick vegetables and fruit in Michigan. My father married my mother in the United States, so that made her an American citizen. Every year they would travel for miles from state to state working on farms along the way. My father had a semi-truck and could fit all our relatives and friends in the back. When they would tell us stories about their travels, we would laugh and say “you were like Gypsys.”
