Work skills polished in classroom contact

By WARREN GAMBLE

In the colourful classrooms of a South Auckland primary school, migrants are taking a novel approach to breaking into the job market.

Rebuffed by Auckland employers, they are going to Mangere Bridge School not to learn but to teach children some of their computer skills.

Starting next week the 13 qualified information technology workers from China and Taiwan hope to improve their English and get the local experience employers say is lacking in their CVs.

At the school yesterday the group were politely puzzled, rather than frustrated, at their continued rejection.

Most had been unemployed for more than a year, despite international qualifications and persistent applications.

Yar-Fine Liu, from Taiwan, explained a shared dilemma: "Every employer ask for local experience, nobody take risk to hire us so we fall into loop - nobody hire me because of no experience but how do I get experience?"

Enter National MP Pansy Wong. Disturbed by unemployment among Asian migrants, particularly in industries with supposed shortages such as information technology, she organised a series of forums to explore the issue.

At one Mr Liu suggested putting their skills to use by helping students, and a network of teacher volunteers was formed.

Mangere Bridge principal Judy Hanna embraced the idea as the school's computer programme to develop class home pages, an intranet network and eventually a website had stalled through a lack of money to pay experts.

"We can provide them with a chance to use English and a chance to work in a New Zealand context. It seemed to us to be a win-win situation."

Mr Liu, who has a software engineering qualification and taught at a university, said working in a Kiwi environment would be a big benefit.

"When we talk with a student they will correct our English. We will teach them how to do a home page, they teach us English. This is a very good opportunity for us."

Lucy Xia, from Wuhan in China, has more than five years' experience as an information technology engineer and also taught at university, but has had a fruitless two-year job search here.

"I'm very happy to join this team and to have a chance to teach the children," she said.

"Even if it's simple, it's very useful because doing our teaching we also get local experience."

The group will work as teacher aides with small groups of Mangere Bridge pupils, starting with the oldest and going right down to 5-year-olds.

Judy Hanna said that thanks to donations of computer hardware and software from the Asian community the guest teachers would also hold seminars for the school's parents.

Pansy Wong said the programme showed migrants were committed to the country and the challenge was for employers to recognise their skills instead of imposing more barriers.

The immigrants - a Herald series

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