Excerpt from the Concord Monitor article For New Americans, Getting a Driver’s License is a Big Step, written by Leah Willingham:
Twenty-eight-year-old Geetha Menni has made Concord her home since she moved from India to New Hampshire nine months ago. She found a comfortable place to live with her husband and secured a job at Lincoln Financial.
Menni said she has big dreams of pursuing a master’s degree in the United States – but she says there is still one big obstacle standing in her way of achieving that goal.
“I am depending on my husband for everything, for rides to my job. I can’t even get to the supermarket without help,” she said, sitting at a desk in front of a whiteboard in an air-conditioned classroom on Knight Street in Concord, where her driving school class was about to start. Her hands were folded over a New Hampshire driver’s manual.
“It’s very much important for me to learn driving, otherwise, I could not survive, have a life here,” she said.
The New American Driving School, at Second Start headquarters in Concord, has been operating for about a year to help new arrivals transition to living and getting around in the U.S. Concord has taken in more refugees per capita than any other New Hampshire city, according to state records.