Finding Hope Through Literacy

Thursday, June, 16, 2011 - 2:02:39 PM 

Patricia Brant, a student at The Literacy Group in Kitchener, was laid off three years ago and feeling low. With the help of The Literacy Group she has boosted her confidence and improved her skills. Now she hopes to land a full-time job or further her education in the future.

For over a decade, The Literacy Group of Waterloo Region has been helping adults upgrade their skills in order to find employment, to further their education, or just for an improved quality of life.

“We offer one-to-one tutoring for people who want to upgrade their reading, writing, math and computer skills. We also have small groups that work together,” said Karen Morgan-Bowyer, The Literacy Group’s program manager.

Tutors are all volunteers who must have good communication skills and a desire to help, but also receive 15 hours of training prior to their first session with a student.

Literacy Group services are free, and are offered to anyone 18 and over.

Those interested in brushing up their skills come in for an assessment to see whether The Literacy Group is the place for them, or whether they should be referred onto the school board or college system.

“(We have) lots of people who had been working for many, many years and even if they graduated from high school had lost skills over time.

“We do have a lot of people who had a lot of difficulty in school and left early, but as they mature and find out it’s hard to make it in the world without literacy skills they come back and will focus on a goal,” she said of the people that come through the doors of their Kitchener office.

One of those people is Patricia Brant, a former manufacturing worker who was laid off three years ago after her employer, an injection molding company, closed its doors.

Brant came across the group when she went to an unemployment office. They gave her a list of resources that could help get her back on her feet, and The Literacy Group was a blessing, for more than one reason.

“It helped me a lot. It picked up my self-esteem,” she said. “I was thinking, ‘Oh, I’ll never get a job, so why even try?’”

Brant does group classes to improve her skills and hopes to get back into the workforce as quickly as possible. She currently works part-time at Sobey’s, picking up one four-hour shift a week, but wants to do more and had an interview this week.

“I hope maybe another two years until I get a full-time job or go onto a higher education, maybe. Whichever comes first,” she said. “I’ve been improving my English. I’ve been getting my adverbs and punctuation and all that. I’ve been learning math and to use a computer.”

The Literacy Group’s Kitchener location usually services about 200 students a year, all with different backgrounds and goals.

“Every story is different really. We get a lot of referrals from Ontario Works and definitely in the past couple of years we’ve had a lot of laid off workers,” said Morgan-Bowyer. “Then occasionally we have somebody who has had something change in their life and they want to learn to read because they haven’t ever been able to. There’s always something that’s motivating them.”

Depending where they are starting from and what their goals are, students can be with the program from six months to three years. As long as they’re still making progress they’re welcome to continue, either with one-on-one tutoring or with classes.

“There are three goals paths. There’s independence, employment and further education and training,” the program manager explained. “The majority of our people are employment and further education. So they may actually be upgrading so they can finish high school at the adult learning centre, or even to go to college.”

The group is funded largely through the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities, but also receives funds from the United Way, and donations received through fundraising.

Still, they rely on volunteer tutors to help students improve their skills and move on to a new stage in their lives.

For more information on services or to volunteer, visit www.theliteracygroup.com or call 519-743-6090.

Learning Networks of Ontario Position Paper #2

Please click here to view the Literacy Networks of Ontario Position Paper #2.  "The Impact on Adult Students due to the ending of Budget Initiative Funding".  

Literacy Funding cuts in the news

By Luisa D'Amato, Record staff Wed Jan 19 2011 

Local literacy programs will lose $2.4 million as federal fund dries up

WATERLOO REGION — Almost half the literacy training that’s available to people living in Waterloo Region and Wellington County will disappear by the end of March, agencies warn.  About 1,600 places for people hoping to learn to read, write and improve math skills will be gone as government funding is cut back by about $2.4 million a year. And 10 to 15 staff at programs run by colleges, school boards and community agencies will be laid off, said Anne Ramsay, executive director of Project READ Literacy Network Waterloo Wellington, which oversees local literacy services. She said this means painful delays for people — many of whom didn’t finish high school — who have been laid off from factory jobs. Many of them are still struggling to fit into a new and more competitive job market. Finishing high school and getting better basic language and math skills are the first step.

Many of those people are at the end of their rope financially, and will suffer while they wait for months instead of weeks to get the training they need. “We’re seeing a lot of people who have lost their severance pay, lost their employment insurance,” she said. “The human cost is more people on welfare,” she said. “They’re going to be losing their homes, losing their wives.” The loss of funding is caused by the termination of a federal government program designed to assist Ontario workers in the recent recession. Ottawa had given the province an extra $90 million over the past two years to help retrain workers displaced by the recession, but the funding ends March 31. John Milloy, Kitchener Centre’s MPP and also the minister of colleges, education and training, said he has lobbied the federal government to extend the funding. He said the provincial government already spends $75 million a year on literacy training. It increased spending in the past eight years on literacy programs overall by 25 per cent. But “what I don’t have control over is the federal dollars,” he said. “We’re going to continue to knock on the door in Ottawa.”

Literacy training is a provincial responsibility, however, and Milloy acknowledged that there are still many people who desperately need it. But the province itself has limited ability to replace the federal funds, he said. “We’re going through a budget process,” he said. “It’s no secret it’s going to be a tough budget. “We’re trying to make the tough choices with very little resources.”

ldamato@therecord.com 

Literacy Funding in the News

By Luisa D’Amato, Record staff   Thu Dec 02 2010 

Milloy fights for adult literacy and skills funding

Ontario cabinet minister John Milloy says the hard times aren’t over yet. And so he is lobbying the federal government to keep a program alive that helps pay for literacy and basic skills training for adults.The federal government had been giving an extra $630 million over the past two years to help get Ontario residents through the recession and ready for a changed workforce. But the economy is recovering, and that funding is scheduled to run out at the end of March, says Milloy, who is minister of training, colleges and universities as well as Kitchener Centre’s Liberal MPP. Unless the federal government extends the program, he said tens of thousands of people will soon be left without access to the skills to qualify for, find, and keep a job. “The effects of the recession on the people of Ontario will not end on March 31st, 2011,” Milloy wrote to Diane Finley, federal minister of human resources and skills development. Job losses in Ontario’s manufacturing sector alone were almost equal to all the jobs lost in the rest of Canada. And Ontario’s unemployment rate in October was 8.6 per cent, compared to 7.9 per cent for the country as a whole, he said. “There’s a need out there,” Milloy said in an interview. “We have thousands and thousands of people displaced because of the recession.” Finley’s communications director, Ryan Sparrow, said that Milloy’s concerns will be taken into account, along with those of other Canadians, as the federal government considers its next budget.“The federal government receives numerous ideas and suggestions from Canadians,” Sparrow said. “All will be reviewed in light of the government’s fiscal realities.” He said that the $630 million already committed represents an “unprecedented” amount of money. It’s on top of another $738 million a year that Ontario gets from Ottawa, and will continue to receive, to train people. Jobs may be returning to Ontario, but local agencies that do the training say there are plenty of people who need help before they can get and keep one. Some of the people waiting for training can’t read well enough even to vote, or fill a prescription, said Carol Risidore, executive director of the Literacy Group of Waterloo Region, which trained about 550 students this year across the region. They don’t have enough computer skills to keep a job serving food in a coffee shop. They might find a job in housekeeping or general labour, but they might lose it again, because their reading and math skills just aren’t good enough.“It takes a huge amount of courage to walk through the door and say, ‘Hey, I need help,’” she said. If they persevere for a year or two, they might have the skills to work in a store, drive a truck or be a personal support worker in a health-care facility. The provincial and federal governments help to pay for their training. These contributions make up about 76 per cent of the agency’s $400,000 budget this year, Risidore said. Fund-raising and donations make up the gap. But when the federal government ends its contributions, the funding will fall sharply, and the number of people that get help would be cut by about 28 per cent. There would be 154 people who would no longer receive assistance. Risidore is worried about cuts to staff and a “huge strain” as the agency moves forward in uncertain times. She said Milloy has been understanding. “He is in there, fighting for us, and we all appreciate it,” Risidore said.

ldamato@therecord.com