I came to know about SPEAK two years earlier from a friend who got participated at SPEAK in a Portuguese Language Group and found it very interesting. Several times he suggested me to join there but at the time live got in the way, as sometimes it does, and I couldn’t join and thus I lost that opportunity to be connected with Speak for the first time.
Then almost a year later in an event called Hello Portugal Festival which focuses on Migration and Integration I met Hugo, SPEAK co-founder, who is very passionate about the topic of migration and social integration and we talked about how we could work together.
We built a partnership between Portugal Multicultural Academy and SPEAK for the language groups I found it very impressive and mind blowing as it helps immigrants, international students, expats and refugees to learn a new language, culture and history of different nations and feel more integrated in their new city These are the main barriers for a newcomer when arriving in a new city.
That’s what lead me to start a SPEAK chapter in Dhaka, Bangladesh. We are about 20 million people living in the Mega City of Dhaka. The young generation wants to migrate for better job opportunities, to study and to settle around the world and SPEAK can help them to learn more about the world and different languages, cultures and help them to feel more familiar when they arrive to a new place.
As SPEAK not only helps with the language but also to share different experiences and ideas where one can get a clear idea of the world in a few months only. People can make new friends and join a community where they can share their own story and be understood and accepted for who they are.
Also, there are about 500 thousand newcomers living in Bangladesh as skilled and semi-skilled workers and also about 1.5 million refugees who came from Myanmar. Thus SPEAK could be a bridge to connect them with the locals and also make them aware of the language, culture and values of our country.