YP Spotlight: Librarian Ashley Molzen helps immigrants learn English

This librarian has a class called Conversations and Coffee, teaching conversational English to immigrants in her community.  - - Donna Poisl

Written by Josh Hafner

The name cards scattered on a table last week at the Forest Avenue Library represented a world’s worth of stories. Each carried a name of a person and a country that person left at some point, for some reason, to eventually come here, to Des Moines.

Clemente, El Salvador. Yasmin, Sudan. Ivetta, Russia. Beuline, Burundi. More than 35 immigrants in all. Some came to the United States more than 20 years ago. Others, two weeks ago. Some came as refugees from war-torn countries. Others did not. But each came here to pick up the card, meet with librarian Ashley Molzen and have a conversation.

“Oh, you want to learn the phone today? Right over there,” said Molzen, pointing an older man to a table across the room.
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