I will go first.
I'm Angela Mowbray, the acting manager of language programs. Our executive director is away on holidays somewhere warm this week, so Joy and I will cover for her and give her introductory warm-up. I'll talk about language programs, and then Joy will talk about the settlement programs and give Lois's concluding remarks.
Westman Immigrant Services envisions a community where diversity is valued and newcomers are accepted and supported in meeting their full potential. One of the greatest advantages we have as an organization is that we offer an array of services to our clients, all in one building. Clients are not required to travel to different locations for different settlement services or language classes at stage one. We're governed by a volunteer board of directors. WIS employs over 40 people, more than 55% of whom are newcomers themselves. We retain the service of more than 90 professional language interpreters and assistants, and we're supported by over 100 community volunteers.
I'll give you some statistics from the 2017-18 fiscal year. During that year, we served over 4,000 clients through our settlement program. We provided 2,315 language interpreters covering 23 different languages. We assisted 368 clients through employment facilitation, and we provided childminding services for close to 300 clients. We resettled 45 government-assisted refugees, or GARs, and 50 will be supported in the 2018-19 fiscal year. We delivered family and youth programs, providing support for newcomer families in a variety of ways. We were supported by 4,993 volunteer hours, so we're fully aware of how important our volunteers are to our programs. We maintained 20 classes for levels one to four throughout the school year, September to June, and we registered about 350 students. We conducted 496 language assessments using the Canadian language benchmarks placement test and also the CLB-LPT, which is the literacy test.
I'm going to tell you a story about one of our students to highlight some of the strengths and challenges of our language programs. I'll call her “Leila” for the purposes of this presentation. Leila is a GAR, and in August of 2016 she came to me for her CLBPT. In her country of origin, she never went to school. As the eldest daughter, she had to stay home to help her mother. Leila told me that every day her father would say to her, “I'm so sorry, Leila, no school for you today.” After her test, Leila was so excited to tell me, “But now I can go to school.”
Unfortunately, Leila ran up against two of our biggest challenges in providing English classes—child care needs and literacy needs. In 2016 Leila had a three-month-old son who was not eligible for child care. Luckily, we do have a family literacy program that Leila was able to attend with her son and that does have an English component, but it is not run with the same expectations as our other classes. As well, Leila is not literate in her first language. Literacy learners usually take a much a longer time to progress. Leila finally began regular English classes in September of 2018. While her listening and speaking have improved over the last two years, her reading and writing have not. She's currently two years behind where she could have been in attaining English-language proficiency.
Leila is an excellent example of how it would be of great advantage to our program if there were more child care spots and focused training and resource development for teachers of literacy learners, as students like Leila end up in almost every class.
That's Leila's story. At the other end of the spectrum we have students who have very high levels of English in comparison. In order to successfully settle in Canada, to attain advanced education and better employment opportunities, it's critical to have high levels of one of our official languages. The hospital in Brandon, for example, requires a completed level 6 to qualify you to work as a cleaner. Some of our retail businesses ask applicants to be at least a level 7. At present there are no evening or weekend classes for stage two students, in levels 5 to 8, to attend in Brandon. There can be long waiting lists for morning and afternoon classes.
Providing English classes to newcomers is one of the key factors in helping them settle successfully in their new community. We look forward to continuing to provide that service, working to ameliorate the challenges and build on our strengths.