
Education
We know that education empowers our community. In addition to Study Buddy, our youth tutoring program, we are expanding our reach with with two pilot projects: Little Neighbors for ages 0-5 and ENL Classes for adults 18+.
Study Buddy
Little Neighbors
Language Access
Adult ENL (English As A New Language)
Study Buddy
Virtual tutoring and educational support for English language learners in middle and high school throughout the City of Pittsburgh.

Since Study Buddy’s start in 2020, we’ve had over 165 students receive more than 3,000 hours of tutoring per semester.
Since 2020, Hello Neighbor has been supporting refugee and immigrant youth in school districts across Allegheny County to navigate the United States education system through personalized online one-on-one tutoring. Current students, recent graduates, and young professionals are matched with refugee and immigrant students in grades 6-12 to help them navigate remote learning, stay motivated to attend class and do their work, and empower them to build relationships with peers and school staff. Volunteer tutors help students with school work, provide subject-specific learning, set up tangible semester-specific goals, increase their confidence in the classroom, and develop their English language and interpersonal skills.
Each semester, the Study Buddy program welcomes guest speakers from local partners, provides students with training relevant to academic development, and in-person events aimed at team building.
The core commitment is by semester (Fall, Spring) and 1-3 virtual hours of tutoring per week.
Interested in becoming a tutor or a Study Buddy student?
Our Study Buddy program runs on an academic calendar, with Fall and Spring semesters. We are always accepting new tutor applications. However, most enrollments will be completed during the summer and winter breaks.

Little Neighbors
Play-based learning and community connection for refugee and immigrant families with young children across the Pittsburgh area.
Little Neighbors supports refugee and immigrant families with children ages 0–5 through monthly early childhood events focused on play, learning, and connection. Held in accessible community spaces across Pittsburgh, each event offers a welcoming environment where families can engage in storytime, music, crafts, and sensory play—activities that foster school readiness and language development in a joyful, low-pressure setting.
So far in 2025, 10 families have attended 5 community events where children explored, played, and learned alongside their parents and caregivers.
Language Access
Adult ENL (English As A New Language)
Ensuring equal access to our services for all refugees and immigrants, regardless of English proficiency or native language.

Language Justice is Social Justice.
Did you know that all agencies receiving federal funding are obligated to provide language access under the 1964 Civil Rights Act? Language access staff advocate for Hello Neighbor clients’ access to interpretation in medical appointments, police encounters, family-school communications, local government, and more.
Our pilot provides ENL Classes to refugees upon arrival. English language is a critical skill for new neighbors learning to navigate life in Pittsburgh. Our ENL pilot offers 3 months of beginner English instruction to newly arrived refugees in Hello Neighbor’s resettlement program. Through these lessons, students learn to express their needs, ask and answer basic questions, and talk about their families, homes, health, and work.
Interested in Volunteering with our ENL Program?
Over 17 Languages Available
Our network of in-house interpreters ensure that all clients have full access to programs and services at Hello Neighbor. Interpreters are valuable members of our team, attending meetings with clients and staff and translating documents. We are committed to investing financially in communities we serve, aiming to hire interpreters who are themselves immigrants or refugees.
Languages spoken by our interpreters include:
- Arabic
- Azeri
- Dinka
- French
- Haitian Creole
- Hindi
- Kinyarwanda
- Nepali
- Pashto
- Persian (Dari, Farsi)
- Pojilo
- Russian
- Somali
- Spanish
- Swahili
- Ukrainian
- Urdu