Literacy Basics - Community Literacy of Ontario

Delivering our programs links us with all of our market groups. Learners use our programs. Partners depend on them for their clients. Volunteers help deliver them. Funders fund them. Our community supports them. Therefore, in marketing terms, we can speak about the delivery of our programs and services as customer service.

To illustrate this point, consider the materials we use in our programs and their role in customer service. The materials we use are the “visuals” of our programs as well as the practical supports that help learners meet their goals. How new, current, relevant or work-related our materials are will influence our marketing relationships. Yet many of us depend on the same old materials we have been using for years. However, if we hope to clearly link learner progress with Essential Skills and other job related skills, it might be time to search for new and unfamiliar materials. If we want to market our programs successfully and offer excellent customer service, we cannot allow our materials to be more about us than about our clients.

How can we convince -

• the learner who reads and answers questions
• the volunteer who lends support in the classroom
• the OW caseworker following up on her client
• the funder who arrives for a program visit

- that an exciting adventure story and the accompanying content-driven questions will further the job readiness of the learner?

Our old materials may do the job, but what is important is the perception of our target market. We do not have to toss out all of our old materials; however, we need to think very carefully about what our materials are saying about us to our markets.

New work-related materials can be challenging for us to use. We are not familiar with their content or how to assess our learners when they use the new materials. Here are some tips to get you started using new materials.

Tips for Selecting New Materials

• Make a decision that you will add new materials to your program on a regular basis.
  
  
• Enlist the support of instructors and volunteers to go over new materials.
  
  
• Put out a call on the Community Literacy of Ontario's electronic discussion on AlphaCom. Be specific about what you are looking for. For example, ask for work-related materials that teach math levels two and three rather than just workforce materials.
  
  
• Train yourself to look for authentic documents when you are out in the community.
  
  
• Check out the workforce curricula developed by Literacy Link Eastern Ontario and Literacy Network Northeast as well as websites like Demonstrations Ontario and Workplace Essential Skills.
  
  • www.lleo.ca/LLEO_pages/resources.html
  • Literacy Network Northeast Building Curricula Project
  • http://demonstrations.alphaplus.ca/
  • Essential Skills

Learners with independence goals also appreciate materials related to their lives in the community. Collect info sheets from around your community and develop lessons from these authentic documents.

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