Churches – Join ESLIM!

What We Offer Your Church’s ESL Program

ESLIM assists its member churches in three crucial areas:

• Teacher training
• Student recruitment
• Volunteer recruitment.

We also provide a forum in which our members share their experience and knowledge.  Our members collectively have hundreds of years of experience in ESL teaching and running ESL programs, and our interactions with one another are educational and enriching.

ESLIM is a support organization – it does not offer English classes itself, but supports churches that offer ESL programs.  Ownership of this ministry belongs to local congregations so that they may be connected in ministry to the neighborhoods that surround them.  So long as our standards of quality are maintained, your program will retain full autonomy to run its program in accordance with your church’s priorities and needs.

ESLIM Brand Value

ESLIM is one of the oldest faith-based ESL programs in Northern Virginia, so our “brand name” has tremendous value.  The ESLIM website consistently ranks highly in Google for important searches like “English Classes in Virgina,” which mean that we are one of the first places that potential students and volunteers check on the Internet.

Teacher Training

ESLIM provides intensive day-long training workshops for new volunteer teachers and shorter “Refresh and Renew” workshops for returning teachers.  The workshops are led by professional English as a Second Language teachers.  ESLIM member churches may send unlimited numbers of teachers to our training programs at no additional cost. (Attendees from other programs will be admitted on a space available basis for fee of $75 per person.)

Advertising and Recruitment

ESLIM conducts advertising campaigns in Spanish, Korean, Vietnamese, and English in late August/early September and late December/early January.  Our publicity includes both radio and newspaper advertising, as well as flyers that are distributed through the local library systems.  Interested students are directed both to our website and to our voice mail.  We are able to return calls in Spanish, Korean, Vietnamese, and English.

Volunteer Recruitment

Volunteers are the lifeblood of every program and locating volunteers can be difficult and time consuming.  Local counties and cities maintain websites for persons seeking volunteer opportunities.  ESLIM maintains current listings on all these websites and in addition runs public service announcements in the the Washington Post and other newspapers.

Our Program Administrator personally contacts each potential volunteer to screen them and place them with church programs that need of teachers and assistants.

How Much Does It Cost to Belong to ESLIM?

The cost of running ESLIM is divided among our member churches in proportion to the student enrollment at each church.  We also engage in fundraising efforts through direct mail, United Methodist Churches, the United Way, and the Combined Federal Campaign to reduce the costs to our member churches.

The cost for 2012 has not yet been set, but we currently anticipate that it will be in the range of $7 per student per semester. However, the costs decrease each time another church becomes an ESLIM member, so we hope that we can lower the per student charge significantly in the future.

I want to know more!

Read the Membership Standards page for more information on joining ESLIM.