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

Qualified logistics manager Nataliia, 40, relocated to the UK from war-torn Ukraine in January 2023. Her home city of Polohy is on the frontline in the Zaporizhzhia Oblast region and has been under Russian occupation since 2022. 

While living in Skelmersdale, Lancashire, she joined one of The Reader’s ESOL Shared Reading group for speakers of other languages. 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 Connect as an outreach worker with new mums. She has also just completed her Reader Leader training and hopes help run an ESOL group. 

For me the Shared Reading group was always my safe place where you are always welcome. It was very calm and felt like I was visiting my family - 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 Ukranian community around me, so I had to dive straight into English which in some ways was very useful.  

When I first arrived in the UK 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 10 years. 

I have a Masters in Logistics and at my last job in Ukraine I was working as a manager for a company supporting other people to find jobs in Europe. I was also trying to set up my own self-employed massage business supporting future parents in pregnancy and studying a complimentary medicine massage course. 

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. 

We’d read stories or poems and discuss them but I soon understood it was much deeper than this. 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.  

At the same time, it was so practical. Some members of the group were from Iran, some Kurdish and some from Sudan 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 me. 

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. 

We shared our thoughts with each other and discussed things happening in our own lives. The people leading this group were just fantastic, it’s a great skill to lead a group like this. 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 have moved to a different place, but we keep in touch and send messages to each other. 

My family are not safe. I just hope that our territory will be free again and we will see each other again. Sometimes, when they have reception, we speak.  

My younger brother is a soldier, and my parents live in different places in Ukraine.

My dad has no reception where he lives and we’ve had no interaction since 2022. My mum calls 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 Connect and my job role came about so quickly. I moved to Liverpool last November and now work part-time as a Refugee 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.