Manjula Patel is both a teacher and student of ACE. She has been a cooking teacher at Wellington High School’s Community Education Centre for around eight years - sharing her skills and culture. She loves teaching and helping all of her class gain in confidence and reach their goals. But writing up the recipes was difficult. Manjula had left school early to help her family financially and as an adult she found reading and writing hard. She didn’t want to go back to classes and “be told off”.

But eventually she enrolled with Literacy Wellington and, she said, “it was nothing like I expected. I walked in and everyone was smiling and laughing and it was so nice. I was only going to come for a short while but I have been studying for several years now. Each year I get more confident. At the end of the first year I got my first certificate. It blew me away that I had something with my name on it that I had achieved. I went on to learn literacy, maths, computers - anything that was going. I now have my National Certificate in Employment Skills. Through Literacy Wellington I have access to tutors and resources. I can use the computers and get help when I need it. My learning was a hard journey and I fell down a few times. The writing I am doing now makes me so happy. My tutor says I have nailed it.“