Over the years we have given grants to support students on the widest range of courses - from helping doctors with exams to gain registration in the UK, to providing money for trainee hairdressers to buy scissors. We report annually to National Association for Teaching English and Other Community Languages to Adults (NATECLA, formerly NATESLA).

The trustees, now thirteen in number, have continued to include a number of active practitioners in the teaching and organising of English as a second or additional language, but some also come from backgrounds in local government, IT and computing, and work with voluntary ethnic minority organisations. They also include trustees who themselves are refugees or come from communities who speak English as a Second or Other Language.

Our grants are small - the maximum award is for £300 - but that is often enough to make a crucial difference with fees, equipment or books. The responses we receive from successful applicants confirm how useful our awards are, especially to refugees and asylum seekers.

Click here for the Annual report 2006 - 07.


Alan Paton's message at Ruth Hayman's funeral said that she had "a gift that is given to few of us - an inner vitality, an energy that seemed inexhaustible, a restless eagerness to be up and doing."

Ruth was a lawyer in South Africa and an outstanding, talented and courageous worker for racial equality and justice. After she was banned for her work in South Africa, she settled in North London, and in 1969 set up the pioneering organisation, Neighbourhood English Classes, to help newly arrived immigrants settle into the UK.

The number of classes and students grew, as did the other schemes being set up across the country. In 1977 Ruth was the first and very active honorary secretary in a new organisation, the National Association for the Teaching of English as a Second Language to Adults (NATESLA).

After her untimely death in October 1981 NATESLA and other friends and supporters set up a trust in her memory.
RUTH HAYMAN