Transferring Cultural Knowledge and Skills: Afghan Teachers for Afghan Students in Montreal

Abstract

This article describes the experiences and perceptions of a small group of Afghan women teachers who have set up a small community school for Afghan children in Montreal. It situates the work that they are doing in the context of knowledge transfer and of social capital building in a diasporic context and discusses this heritage education program in relation to transnational processes of living and learning in multiple sites. The women, who were all teachers in Afghanistan, experienced conflict and a political situation which ultimately forced them to leave their homes; as immigrants to Canada they experience the multiple challenges of individual and family integration. However, as volunteer community teachers, they have strong ideas about the work they do and a strong sense of purpose to it; they use their own professional understandings and skills to transmit the cultural knowledge and language skills which they believe are important for young Afghan Canadians and their families in Montreal.