Nataliia: ‘The Skelmersdale Shared Reading group has become like family to me’ 

Former recruitment manager Nataliia, relocated to the UK from war-torn Ukraine in January 2023. Her home city of Polohy in the Zaporizhzhia region has been under Russian occupation since 2022.    

While living in Skelmersdale, Lancashire, she joined one of The Reader’s Shared Reading group for speakers of other languages (ESOL). Here people connect, share experiences and practise their English using stories and poems.  

In November 2024 Nataliia moved to Liverpool where she now works for Refugee Women Connect as an outreach worker with new mums. She has also just completed her Reader Leader training and hopes to help run an ESOL Shared Reading group herself. 

For me the Shared Reading group was always my safe place where you are always welcome. Everyone really cares about you and supports you. 

It’s the place where I started to feel able to speak more confidently in English. When I moved to Skelmersdale I did not have the Ukrainian community around me and I was too shy to speak as did not want to make any mistakes. I had studied English at school, and my written English was good, but I had not used it for more than 10 years. 

I first heard about The Reader’s ESOL Shared Reading group in Skelmersdale from a community which supports refugees. To say that the Skelmersdale group is great is an understatement. They’ve become like family to me. I never missed a single week. 

Sometimes we would discuss one line in a poem for 20 minutes and everyone would find something to say and share their ideas. Although we are all from different places, we have so many similarities and shared our thoughts with each other and discussed things happening in our own lives.

We all really connected through the poems.

I came to this country with my cat. One week we read a poem and were talking about our pets. That week my cat had passed away, and I just started crying and they gave me huge support. I have made incredible friends. 

Some members of the group were from Iran, Iraq, Ethiopia, Egypt, Kurdistan, Sudan and other countries and many could not speak much English in the beginning. It was really nice you could see their progress week by week – putting all these English words in a sentence, it was so incredible. It really helped everyone. 

I also went to ESOL classes at college but feel I learnt more from Shared Reading group as I felt it was more practical and useful. 

My family are not safe. I just hope that our territory will be free again and we will see each other again. We text each other when they have internet access.    

My younger brother is a soldier, and my parents live in different towns in Ukraine that are occupied be Russians. My dad has no reception where he lives, and we’ve had no interaction since 2022. My mum writes to me when she has some reception. 

I love to help other people and said to myself if I survive the dark parts of my life that is what I would do. 

I started volunteering with Refugee Women Connect and my job role came about so quickly. I moved to Liverpool last November and now work part-time as an Outreach Worker – working with peri-natal women. It’s what I always wanted to do and sounds like a miracle. It’s really magic.   

When our Shared Reading group leader Jane proposed I become a Reader Leader, I was surprised I did not think I could do it because my English isn’t so good. But I have finished the training course and would like to help run a group. 

For me I love to read something that gives you thoughts for your brain and touches your heart. 

Books/poems I’d like to share: Rudyard Kipling’s If; Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell; Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita, Mayne Reid’s The Headless Horseman and Gavrill Troepolsky’s White Bim Black Ear. 

The Reader currently runs 15 ESOL groups for speakers of other languages across the Liverpool City Region and rest of the UK. If you or someone you know would benefit from an ESOL Shared Reading group please visit our Find a Group page here. To find out more about The Reader’s Shared Reading in Communities visit here or if you would like to partner with us visit here.