When Neimo Ali settled in San Diego after immigrating from Ethiopia, she didn’t know more than a few words of English, had little in the way of job skills and was uncertain about her future. What she did have was determination.
And that determination led her to the San Diego College of Continuing Education’s award-winning ESL program and its burgeoning collaboration with the nonprofit MAKE Projects, which operates an urban farm, cafe and catering service aimed to equip immigrant and refugee women with job readiness training, an abundance of mentors and career guidance.
With the college’s ESL classes building fluency in occupational English and MAKE Projects providing the resume-building work experience, Ali today is a confident U.S. citizen with an open vision of her future.
“When I came to San Diego, I don’t know even how to say ‘Hi’ to my neighbors, I didn’t know how to talk with people in English,” said Ali, 33. “I stayed home. I don’t know anybody. Now, I speak better, I have experience working in a restaurant, I have friends who I can converse with in English. I have a future.”
Community outreach
MAKE is an acronym for Merging Agriculture Kitchens and Employment. Officially known as the Project for Self-Sufficiency through Education and Enterprise (Project SEE), the College of Continuing Education/MAKE Projects collaboration — funded through a federal Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act Title II grant — was developed in 2022 and formalized a year later. Cohorts of six students sign up for 12-week job-readiness sessions with MAKE Projects; 55 women and 20 youths went through the program last year.
With seven campuses across the city, the College of Continuing Education is adult education arm of the San Diego Community College District. In 2024, two ESL instructors, Monica Cueva and Carol Basilio, joined MAKE to train and support its staff and volunteers to work more effectively with beginning-level English learners. They also revised and developed materials for MAKE and created content for a new, beginning-level, vocational ESL course focused on preparing students for working in the hospitality industry.
Aside from food-industry jobs, students in the program have enrolled in career education programs ranging from healthcare to child development. One, a single mom, is now a full-time student at San Diego City College with plans to become a social worker. Others are looking to start their own business.
“This has been a very good experience for me,” said Homira Wahisi, an Afghani journalist who fled Kabul in 2022 and who spoke no English when she arrived in San Diego. “This was my first job in the U.S.”
Wahisi recently secured a license to open a childcare center.
A path to success
The program is an important safety net as well as springboard for participants, said Anchi Mei, founder and executive director of MAKE Projects.
“We’re basically a catalyst, but we’re an important catalyst, because we’re catching women who are in this valley of low confidence and low opportunity,” she said. “We’re helping them to not just succeed in their next job, but to succeed in finding a career pathway and preparing them to succeed along that pathway.”
Mei continued: “There is a lack of culturally competent, socially appropriate workforce development programs for low-literacy refugee women in San Diego, and we’re creating a safe space where our participants are feeling safe and welcome and are highly encouraged to be speaking English at all times.”
Sharpening their skills
ESL students begin their 12-week MAKE Projects journey with a two-week immersion in organic cultivation and farm-to-table cuisine at a MAKE Projects garden adjacent to Snapdragon Stadium in Mission Valley that supplies both produce for the restaurant as well as a community-supported agriculture box subscription program that generates revenue to cover operating expenses. That’s followed by another two weeks of training at the MAKE Café in the heart of North Park before they begin serving customers.
Chedencia Martin, 24, who immigrated from Haiti by way of Brazil, wrapped up her 12-week Project SEE program in November.
“This program helped me a lot,” she said. “It helped me improve my skills in English, to be more conversational. It helped me become more confident. And it helped me to continue with my objective to be a nurse.”
