I HEART The WEA

So Thursday and Fridays i spend my time with the WEA, the Workers Educational Association. http://www.wea.org.uk/aboutus/index.htm It is over one hundred years old and is spread out over the whole of the UK (and even some of Australia.) So, what is the WEA? Well it is a center for education and rehabilitation. It gives a second chance to those who, for some reason or the other, may have missed out at achieving an education at an earlier stage in their life. The WEA also provides guidance and councilling to help them find a place in society (college courses, job placements etc.) All the members of the thursday class are middle aged and come from a variety of different backgrounds. I dont know exactly what it is they have been through (as they are supposed to approach you out of their own incentive, once they have gotten to know and trust you) but from what i have gathered it is a mixture of alcohol abuse, drug abuse, homelessness and long term illness. They are referred to the center by whoever takes care of them and are welcomed with open arms. The classes which run on Thursdays and that i take part in are the Scottish History class and Mellow Fruitfulness (which consists of foraging for food and cooking seasonal vegetables.) The teachers are enthusiastic (one of the history teachers is a never ending source of spooky aberdonian ghost stories) but the students not always so. Some of them live in their own worlds, suddenly interrupting the class with outbursts of statements that have nothing to do with the topic at hand. The teachers are patient with these but always encourage the class to focus on their work. Others remain withdrawn, with sunken eyes and a constant silence. They are left to brood on their own, never forced to participate. But if they do decide to participate, they are welcomed with smiles and encouragement.

On the whole the classes are diverse and energetically led. Enough so to see the same members return every week. Most enjoy the classes and the feeling of being educated, but some return purely out of the need to have a source of stability. Warmth and affection is always abundantly supplied by the staff who lead the classes (Claire, Ross, Annie and Graham.) The students feel free to approach them to discuss their personal problems and are free to visit the center any day they chose. Parties are always thrown with gusto on all the adequate hollidays (halloween, St andrews day, Christmas etc.) with baking, party treats and decorations aplenty. The center is a small town house, located in the center aberdeen, and emits a sense of homeliness. It's multicoloured walls are decorated with present and past students' art and IT work, giving one the strange impression of being in a childrens nursery. The effect is enforced by a plathora of plants and a large colourful cage which sits in the corner of the classroom and plays home to the two residential guinea pigs: Morag and Elaine (named after the admin staff, much to their distaste). The classes have to look out for the welfare of these two, cleaning out the cage and giving them food and water. This provides the members with a small and yet somewhat significant sense of responsibility. Ross has told me that when one of the members becomes agitated or upset, he can hand them one of the guinea pigs and the therapeutic effect is almost instant. The house is equipped with a large kitchen, a classroom with six computers and a shed load of arts and crafts materials, a "calming" room with a sofa where members can go to be on their own or have a one-on-one with the staff, and three small offices where the admin staff labour tirelessly over the promotion and maintenance of the aberdeen branch of the WEA. Every year is a new battle for financing as no trust fund will supply a particular charity for two years running. The money they are currently applying to Tesco for will barely cover half a year's wages for a part time member of staff. This is strange as the people who work here are some of the most dedicated and hard working people i have ever met. Ross actually runs a football club every wednesday free of charge because he simply can not be bothered to go through the entire mountain of paperwork it would normally have taken him to get the funding.

So how effective are these classes? From what i've heard, the WEA will run any class or group the government will pay for, from Literature to Literacy, English Language Classes for foreigners, reading groups and walking excursions. Aberdeen is home to such several institutions that will provide these services free of charge. But one of the main problems is that it will always be the same group of people, alternating the different classes and different institutions over different days of the week, they have done so for a few years already and will probably do so for some years more, never leaving the comfort and security that they are provided with here. The classes are supposed to be a gateway for people, a means to enter back into society (work, education, community, economy) but what is happening is that the people are building the groups around themselves to form their own version of a society. And though they can be encouraged, they can not be made to move on. But how big a problem is this? Does it matter if within a town cursed by heroin and poverty, a town which neglects the poor in favour of the oil elite, that one groups of unfortunates have found a corner of solace? As i have said, i only know a fraction of the gritty details of these peoples' pasts, so i find it hard to judge the situation. The staff seem to be the only people around here who have any inkling of what's going, so maybe if i stick around for a few more years or so, I too could begin to evaluate properly the ins and outs of a charity such as the WEA.

phew, that was a tricky post to write, i am now going to treat myself by listening to some much deserved devendra banhart and thinking of other things "put me in your blue skies, put me in your GREEEEEEEYYY!!"