Literacy Basics - Community Literacy of Ontario

Introduction

Module Overview

Literacy agencies have long recognized the importance of promoting their programs. This online training module is specifically designed for the literacy field. Here you will learn about the unique ways that marketing can benefit your programs and the relationships you form as a community member. Community Literacy of Ontario adapts marketing concepts from business and non-profit organizations and customizes them for literacy use. This training module shares new ideas as well as valuable research from Ontario community based agencies province-wide.

The Literacy Basics Marketing Module features the Marketing Circle, which helps you to strategize and organize your marketing endeavours. It offers the Marketing Continuum, which helps you to analyze your marketing and see what is working and what is not. This module also includes many examples from the literacy field as well as statistics and information about successful marketing strategies in community based literacy. Community Literacy of Ontario hopes that your literacy program benefits from the marketing strategies, tools, tips and examples available in the module.

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About this Project

In April 2007 Community Literacy of Ontario received funding from the Adult Learning, Literacy and Essential Skills Program (Government of Canada) for a project called: “Making the Connection: Effective Program Promotion in Literacy Agencies.”

Community Literacy of Ontario has undertaken this marketing project in response to requests from the field for useful marketing strategies, tools and resources.
In Making the Connection: Effective Promotion in Literacy Agencies CLO proposed:

• to conduct field-based research to examine how programs are currently marketing their services and conducting outreach to potential clients and their communities
• to use the survey results to showcase the value community literacy agencies bring to their communities
• to conduct research and study effective marketing and outreach in domains outside of literacy
• to document and highlight best practices and innovative ideas in marketing and outreach
• to give literacy agencies tools to help them enhance outreach to adult learners, community stakeholders, partners and referral organizations

As a result of the survey and research, Community Literacy of Ontario has developed:

• Marketing Ourselves: a resource guide for Ontario's community based agencies (available from Community Literacy of Ontario)
• online training
• this self-directed training module on Literacy Basics

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