Women immigrants in Denmark are often isolated from the labour market, from the local society and from learning. In two innovative projects, a Danish folk high school has trained women immigrants in catering and as environmental ambassadors in the community.

Ishøj Daghøjskole is a non-residential folk high school situated in a Copenhagen suburb with a high proportion of immigrants. The school specialises in adult education, guidance, competence clarification and employment access.

Last year, the school director (herself an immigrant from Hungary) realised the potential of combining three different realities in the community:

1. According to a new law, local children’s day care centres were supposed to supply the children with lunch meals – consequently they had to hire new kitchen staff.
2. A lot of women from ethnic minorities had major difficulties in integrating into the employment market, often having an extremely low school education and Danish language problems.
3. These women generally were very experienced in cooking for the family and for huge parties, but did not have expertise in healthy food, food and kitchen hygiene, workplace security or economy.

Partnership for employability

Based on these facts, the school developed a course aimed at educating immigrant women in the areas in which they lacked competencies, with the goal of them being hired by local day care centres.

The course was based on existing networks of local partners that were even expanded, including:

-          The municipal authority in charge of social benefits and job access for the unemployed women

-          The municipal authority in charge of day care centres

-          A local vocational school of food production

This resulted in an 18-week long course. The basic teaching in food and catering took place at the vocational school, while the folk high school was responsible for teaching language skills and the necessary general cultural, social and workplace competencies. The latter was also involved in the follow-up required for helping participants to really understand the teachings of the vocational school. For three weeks, the participants were able to practise what they had learnt in kitchens run either by the municipality or by big private workplaces.

Jobs nevertheless

A cloud was set above the course, however, when the government postponed the obligatory lunch meal at day care centres. An obvious job opportunity disappeared.

Nevertheless, most of the women who participated in the course were subsequently employed; many of them in other areas of cooking and catering.

Sustainability in households

Another innovative project in 2009 by Ishøj Daghøjskole was two environmental courses with women of ethnic minorities as the target group.

During the courses, the women learnt about problems of environmental sustainability, including how to treat water, electricity and heating as limited resources, how to reduce and sort waste and how to treat chemicals in the household with care.

The organising teacher, Bettina Fellov, declares that there is a great potential for reducing electricity and water in immigrant families:

“To many participants, buying electricity is not as obvious as buying bread in the supermarket. When they turn on electricity in their homes, they don’t think about it in that way.

“So we had to make it really simple. I turned on the light in the classroom and said: Now I am buying electricity. Then I turned it off and said: Now I am not.”

Green Visits

The aim of the courses was not just to make the participants act more environmentally efficient in their own homes. In return for no tuition fees, the participants went on visits in the housing estates of the community as environmental ambassadors transferring the newly acquired knowledge – so-called Green Visits.

Reporting back, the participants could tell that most of the tenants were happy about the visit and that it was possible to supply them with new knowledge.

In the second stage of this project, a lengthy manual on running such courses was produced. It is now available for free on the Internet. In addition, the Association of Day Folk High Schools organised a series of five meetings around Denmark to transmit the idea and experiences from Ishøj Daghøjskole to other adult educators.