An intensive English learning centre has become a casualty of COVID-19 border closures as a shortage of new arrivals in Australia means a lack of demand for services, forcing significant job cuts.
The job losses are hitting a sector of the community already struggling to find employment.
Leatitie Umuvyeyi is one of many Intensive English Centre (IEC) multilingual support workers in Wollongong, on the New South Wales South Coast, who have been placed on reduced hours while international borders are closed.
Ms Umuvyeyi has gone from working three days a week to potentially one.
"If I didn't get a job at the IEC it would have been really hard for me to find employment anywhere considering English is not my first language," she said.
But the organisation relies on new arrivals to Australia and without the demand from students, it cannot maintain staff levels.
"Seeing the way COVID-19 has impacted the IEC is so sad because before we were able to teach traditional Burundian dancing," Ms Umuvyeyi said.
"Being a student and working at the IEC has allowed me to be surrounded by people from all cultures and also meet people who are going through the same life experiences as myself."
'We are like a family'
With no new students arriving in Australia, classes have dropped from an average of 18 students in a classroom to as low as five.
The reduction is having an emotional impact on the IEC's full-time workers.
"We love all our teachers and multilingual staff because we are like a family here at the IEC and it's sad to see a lot of people go," IEC head teacher Ruth Cooke said.
"There is no job like working for a place like the IEC — you get to help so many students who would otherwise be struggling in other school environments.
"So many of our students come to the IEC with a very low level of education, and some come to the IEC with no level of education at all, and we work to prepare them for high school, college or TAFE."
Hope to rehire staff if borders open
Ms Cooke hopes that the service will be able to rehire its workforce once a COVID-19 vaccine is widely available and borders re-open.
"Our IEC is reliant on new student arrivals and, without new arrivals, we are not able to keep all our multilingual support workers," she said.
"We still need some of them and hopefully we can try and keep some for the upcoming terms."
In the meantime, the organisation will still provide services for Australian citizens.
"The vast majority of our students are from a refugee background, but that's not all of our students," Ms Cooke said.
"We take students who are Australian citizens and they are children returning from overseas after many years and need English language help.
"We are hoping to get some of the refugee families coming as there is talk that will happen in the first half of the year."
The Wollongong IEC has been operating in the city since 1980.
