RESDAC is approaching literacy with a more holistic perspective maintaining that adult learners need to develop skills in an integrated way. The model starts with an understanding the context in which the adult learner operates. You have to ask what are the adult’s needs? What kinds of jobs are out there? What is the language of the community and the workplace? What are the employment and training options? How do you meet the needs in a realistic timeframe for adults? At the same time, practitioners can start creating strategic local partnerships to address the many complex needs of low literacy adults.

However, Lurrette notes that literacy providers have “fallen into the trap” of applying the same linear and sequential model to adult learning as is used on adolescents, who have a longer time frame in which to gain skill. A paradigm shift is necessary from a solely educational focus to a skill and context-based perspective.

Report – Towards and Integrated Model to Support the Literacy Development of Francophones in Canada.

From Industry Canada and the Canadian Chamber of Commerce:

Presented in partnership with Industry Canada and the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, during this one hour educational webinar learn ‘How The Federal Government Can Help Your Business’

Learning Outcomes:

• Learn where to find free business information online
• Find out about the programs and services that are available to help your business succeed
• Get a customized list of permits and licences
• Find out how to search for grants and financing

About the Speaker:

Katie Fillion is a content developer for the Canada Business Network. She works with partners across the country to provide useful, accurate information to entrepreneurs who are starting, managing, and growing small and medium-sized businesses.

Industry Canada Small Business Branch

Industry Canada’s Small Business Branch enhances the growth and competitiveness of small business and encourages entrepreneurship through its programs and services

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From: The Canadian Chamber of Commerce and Human Resource Development Canada:

 Attracting and retaining skilled workers in a tightening labour market is a major concern for many employers. Labour market information (LMI) can help them address that concern.  For businesses looking to expand or adjust to market changes, LMI is valuable to making business and location decisions.

Employers are especially interested in the labour market information for their community and want to understand the availability of workers, the current market conditions and where to find workers with specific skills. LMI can support all those needs and assist with human resource planning. Unfortunately, many employers have difficulties finding the LMI they need to support their decision-making.

This webinar will address these challenges and needs and will help you access data that will allow you to find the skilled workers your business needs. Experts from Human Resources and Skills Development Canada will take you on a step-by-step tour of the LMI resources available on WorkingInCanada.gc.ca and JobBank.gc.ca. Presenters will give you an overview of what data exists and where it comes from, known gaps and work currently underway to improve LMI and its dissemination. They will also show you how to use the tools available online and answer any questions you may have.

We hope you will join us for this informative session.

Presenters

• Jean-François Bussières, Senior Policy Strategist
• Annie Champagne, Senior Project Analyst

Working in Canada and Job Bank Division
Skills and Employment Branch
Human Resources and Skills Development Canada

Contact
Angela Roy | aroy@chamber.ca

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Since 2011, the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada (FCAC) has been proud to highlight November as Financial Literacy Month (FLM) in Canada. The objective of this initiative is to increase awareness about the importance of financial literacy and to encourage organizations to participate by designing and offering financial education activities.

The success of FLM depends on collaboration–the partnership of hundreds of Canadian organizations like yours that have a vested interest in greater financial literacy in Canada.

Even though November is still a few months away, FCAC has already begun planning FLM 2013. I encourage you to start planning activities and/or events now. I also encourage you to solicit your partners to spread the word.

FCAC will once again host an online calendar of events where Canadians can see the activities and events slated for their city, province, etc. Last year’s calendar had 265 activities and events and our goal is to surpass the number of entries this year.

We will be in touch with you as further details about FLM 2013 become available. In the interim, you can contact FCAC at flm@fcac.gc.ca should you have any questions or stay connected with FCAC via:

TwitterFCAC’s, Youtube channelFaceBookLinked In

From Essential Skills Ontario:

Bridges Out of Poverty provides dynamic, practical strategies to assist community organizations, social-service agencies, employers and individuals address poverty in a comprehensive way. People from all economic classes come together to build resources, improve outcomes, increase job retention rates and to support those who are moving out of poverty.

Join Essential Skills Ontario Tuesday, June 4 at 1:00PM ET for our webinar, Bridges Out of Poverty, hosted by Anne Ramsay, Executive Network Director of Project READ Literacy Network Waterloo-Wellington, President and Chair of Essential Skills Ontario’s Board of Directors and Certified Bridges Out of Poverty Trainer.

In this free, one hour webinar, participants will be introduced to how Bridges Out of Poverty can help:
• Enhance your understanding of poverty
• Identify how economic class influences institutions and the workplace
• Increase your knowledge of the hidden rules of economic class
• Support individuals living in poverty to access community services

There will be time for questions at the end of the webinar.

Register

We have heard from over 500 Literacy and Essential Skills workers across Canada, but we need more. Our goal is 1000 responses by May 17. We especially need to hear from practitioners in Quebec, Saskatchewan, Newfoundland and Labrador, NWT, Nunavut and Yukon as well as those representing the Aboriginal and Francophone communities. Please take the time to share your story about the realities of working in the LES field and make sure your perspective is represented in this national study.

If you are you involved in the provision of Literacy and Essential Skills programs and services, exclusively or as part of other services you deliver, to adults, as a paid teacher/instructor, skills assessor, program/curriculum developer, administrator, coordinator or manager, this survey is for you.

To access the Survey directly, in English or French, visit https://websurvey.srdc.org/s/SLESW/. A PDF version that can be completed offline can be found here,

The survey is being overseen by the Canadian Literacy and Learning Network (CLLN) as part of the Literacy and Essential Skills Labour Market Study. Click here www.lesworkforce.ca to learn more about the CLLN and the study.

From the The National Adult Literacy Database (NALD):

The National Adult Literacy Database (NALD) will host a webinar on its digital library Wednesday, May 8, 2013, from 2:30 to 3:30 p.m. Atlantic time.

Scheduled to last approximately an hour, the presentation will be given by NALD acquisitions manager Lorette Melanson. She will begin by giving an overview of the online library, which includes Learning materials and Research materials.

The webinar will cover different search options such as free searching, advanced searches and browsing. Also included will be how to sort the results of a search, information on recent additions, NALD’s priority categories and a variety of searching tips.

Agenda includes:

• Brief overview of NALD and its library
• Library collections
• Number of documents housed
• Search capabilities
• Copyright information
• Advanced search
• Sorting documents after a search
• Browse feature including Browse by keyword
• Interactive comments
• How documents make it to the library
• Top 20 Downloads

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When Wendy Seys, Executive Director of the Yamaska Literacy Council (YLC) looked at partnering with an adult education centre, instead of preparing a finished product to show them, she went on a discovery tour to learn their specific needs and then develop a program. In the resulting partnership, the YLC provides training by focusing on the Essential Skills needed for specific classes to help students who want to get into a vocational training program. Guided by an activity brief that uses terms and language that address the needs of potential partners, the YLC now has a template that can be used to demonstrate the benefits of working together to other potential partners.

The practices followed by the YLC in developing that partnership can be further understood by looking at the preliminary findings from the “Measures of Success” pilot research project done by the Centre for Literacy (CFL) in partnership with Social Research and Demonstration Corporation (SRDC). Measures of Success developed an evaluation model to measure the medium and long-term outcomes of workplace learning initiatives aimed to improve the literacy and essential skills of participating workers.

CFL Researcher Jocelyn Charron, and SRDC Research Director David Gyarmati shared preliminary results from the pilot project that looked at the effects of Literacy and Essential Skills in the Workplace at 18 firms in Nova Scotia and Manitoba. Findings suggest that literacy and essential skills training in workplaces can produce gains and performance improvements in many areas, for workers and employers.

Charron and Gyarmati found that when a learner had a positive attitude toward the training and a higher number of specific training goals, and a more positive attitude about training in general, they saw greater post-LES training outcomes. This finding is in line with the positive experience reported by the YLC working with students who have the specific goal of qualifying for a vocational training program. As well, Charron and Gyarmati saw that when the instructor and employer articulated the same skills and performance goals, the effects of LES training were greater.

The decision by the YLC to work with the partnering adult education centre to develop a program and focus on teaching the Essential Skills needed for specific courses helped to make LES training more attractive to the partners and the learners.

Help inform and shape thinking around policy, practice and research as we prepare for PIAAC.  

The Institute will examine and compare the learning from IALS and ALL across Canada and other countries, and explore how we can make most effective use of soon-to-be released PIAAC results. We will look at the new segments–problem-solving in technology-rich environments and the reading components – and at the implications of changes in levels and cut-off. How can the results be presented to multiple audiences in ways that are easily understood and applied?

We expect participation from every province and territory.

 Participating experts:

Paul Bélanger, Associate Professor at the University of Québec in Montreal, is founder and director of the Centre interdisciplinaire de recherche/développement sur l’éducation permanente (CIRDEP) and of l’Observatoire Compétences-emploi, a centre that monitors trends in continuing education and development of competencies.

Patrick Bussière, Director of the Learning Policy Research Division of Human Resources and Skills Development Canada (HRSDC)

Greg Brooks, literacy research consultant, retired from University of Sheffield (UK)

Jean-Pierre Jeantheau, Chargé de mission national, Agence nationale de lutte contre l’illettrisme, France

Bryan Maddox, senior lecturer in education and development at the School of International Development, University of East Anglia.

Stephen Reder, Professor, Portland State University, Oregon, who will share strategies from the US as they create and implement a dissemination process for PIAAC results.

Tom Schuller, Director of Longview, UK, and author of Learning Through Life: Inquiry into the Future of Lifelong Learning (with David Watson, NIACE 2009)

Katerina Sukovski, Coordinator, Literacy and Education, Council of Ministers of Education, Canada (CMEC)

William Thorn, Senior Analyst, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), who will open the institute with a presentation on PIAAC and the OECD skills strategy.

Register

Service Canada–Quebec Region wishes to inform you that a Notice of Interest is currently in effect for the Skills Link program.  This program is designed to help young people overcome employment barriers and acquire a wide range of skills, knowledge and work experience needed to enter the labour market.
 
We therefore invite you to submit your application from April 29, 2013 to May 31, 2013.  The projects should last no longer than 12 months and begin mainly in autumn 2013 or before March 31, 2014.

Regional Priorities 2013–2014
 
The projects which answer elements mentioned below will be considered in priority:
 
-       Projects focussing on the following employment interventions:

• Work Experience
• Employability Skills Through Work Experience

(For more information on each component, please visit http://www.hrsdc.gc.ca/eng/funding/index.shtml.)
-       Projects primarily aimed for an employment integration
-       Projects aimed to support youth of the following target groups:

•   Aboriginal
•   Visible minorities
•   People with disabilities

To submit your application, please complete the following two forms:
-       Application for Funding (EMP 5523)
-       Budget Detail Template
 
The Applicant Guide, the two forms and the program’s information are available at the following address: www.hrsdc.gc.ca/eng/funding/index.shtml.

Where to submit your application?
 
Your forms must be sent by May 31, 2013, at 11:59 pm, Eastern Time.
 
By mail
Service Canada / Skills Link Program
1001, De Maisonneuve Boulevard East
4th Floor
Montreal, Quebec
H2L 5A1
 
By email
qc-prog@servicecanada.gc.ca
 
In person
Find a Service Canada Office
www.servicecanada.gc.ca/cgi-bin/sc-srch.cgi?app=hme&ln=eng
 
Additional information
Should you have any questions, please feel free to get in touch with us by telephone or email.
 
Telephone: 1-866-233-3194, extension 6032
Email: qc-prog@servicecanada.gc.ca