Wednesday Night Tutoring is a program that provides academic assistance to refugee children, mainly from East Timor, Ethiopia, Iran and Vietnam. It runs during the school term on each Wednesday night between 7:30pm and 9:00pm at the Richmond housing commissions flats. Although we do provide academic help, our core aim is to help the students grow as people and aid them in integrating into the Australian way of life.

History

We began in April 2000, with just seven tutors: James Lee, Patrick Gracey, Riordan Williams, Gabrielle Stewart, Bernadette Fitzgerald, Fiona Killackey and Danielle Brunton(Wiggs); and just one family, the Hi Family. This first night was organized by James Lee after he participated in tutoring migrant and refugee children at Friday Night School as part of community service with his secondary school, Xavier College.

Friday Night School is a program which still runs today at St John's Primary School in Richmond, every Friday afternoon. During his time at Friday Night School he made close ties with St Vincent de Paul (in particular Margaret Gurry, the co-ordinator of Friday Night School) and the many children that attend. It was decided that a new, informal tutoring service would be started to allow university students to offer their assistance, because the Friday afternoon time is not possible for many young people who are otherwise quite willing to offer their help.

For the first few months, James and the six other tutors continued to return on a weekly basis to tutor the Hi Family in their flat. These sessions were very informal and basically involved reading with the children and helping them with their homework. The tutors and students are paired by matching the child's needs and the tutor's strengths as closely as possible, as well as matching personalities.

As the program progressed, more tutors wanted to join the program, at first friends of those already involved, and later hearing about the progrem through the media or word of mouth. And of course, with more tutors, more children were needed! Thus new families in the area gradually joined the program - the children are recommended by Margaret if she believes they had shown significant effort in their studies, and show commitment in both attending Friday Night School and helping out there as they can.

Now, more than 10 years later, hundreds of volunteer tutors have provided over ten thousand hours of help to hundreds of students, and the program is still going strong.

Co-ordinators:
Julia Lee	Andrew Romanin
Committee:
Dan Brenan	Nicola Greenberg
Amelia Harris	Alice Muhlebach
Alisia Romanin	Sara Sharpe
Tessa Young