National Adult Literacy Database

Nova Scotia wants to hear more from employers and industry on what they can do to ensure apprentices are ready for good jobs in the province. An advisory panel will gather information about increasing the number of employers and graduates in the apprenticeship program.

Help Essential Skills Ontario staff continue their branding evolution by telling them how you feel they're doing. They want to know: "Does our brand align with the work we’re doing? What’s the impact of our new brand? Where can we go from here?"

Decoda Literacy Solutions has given a timely new twist to the traditional essential skills to mark the new year and assist with returning to work after a long stretch of vacation days.

The event will begin with an afternoon forum, which will feature keynote speaker Zoe Yujnovich, President and CEO of the Iron Ore Company of Canada. Panelists will include women from across the province who will share their insights and experiences, whether as a chair on a corporate board, as a community volunteer or as a young woman reaching out to her community and humanity around the world.

Workers who ring in the new year with a new job may find learning the ropes to be their biggest challenge, a new Accountemps survey suggests. Nearly half of employees and 39 per cent of managers interviewed said mastering new processes and procedures tops their list of concerns when joining a company. Twenty-three per cent from each group cited getting to know a new boss and colleagues as the greatest hurdle.

Steven Blaney, Minister of Veterans Affairs, along with representatives from the True Patriot Love Foundation and the Canadian National Railway Company (CN), have announced two new initiatives to further support veterans as they transition to civilian life. The first, the new Veterans Transition Advisory Council, will bring together industry leaders and government with the goal of helping veterans transition into meaningful jobs in the private sector.

The Brandon and District Worker Advocacy Centre (BDWAC) provides a range of services including information on training opportunities through employment insurance, career counselling, access to benefits, and help with job searches and financial management.

The purpose of the State of the Literacy and Essential Skills Field report is to provide an overview of Literacy and Essential Skills across Canada from the unique perspective of CLLN and its national network partners, the provincial and territorial literacy coalitions. This is the first national environmental scan to be conducted by CLLN and as such it will inform the direction of future scans and will be the basis of further work to show how the Literacy and Essential Skills field is responding to trends.

In his new free workshop for 2013, Tom Sticht reviews extensive data on intergenerational inequalities in education and economics. He also presents data from many studies to suggest that greater investments in the education of undereducated youth and adults, many of whom are parents or will become parents, can help break the multiple life cycles of inequalities in education and economic achievement.

The Saskatchewan Literacy Network has prepared this report to provide the context for literacy and essential skills activities in the province and to gain a more strategic understanding of existing and emerging skill shortages and their impact on literacy and essential skills.

Manitoba will build on its success in increasing apprenticeship and trades opportunities for more Manitobans and grow Manitoba’s skilled workforce through a new program called Skill Build. The program will upgrade and equip more industrial arts classrooms in rural Manitoba for apprenticeship training.

ABC Life Literacy Canada would like to help employers build a better skilled, more resilient and effective workforce. If you are the company owner, general manager or HR manager, the organization would appreciate your completing this survey.

The Welsh Baccalaureate qualification, known as the Welsh Bacc, teaches a core of subjects such as math and languages and gives students the chance for work experience. Rebecca Williams, policy officer at Wales' teaching union UCAC, described the Welsh Bacc as a positive, saying it "combines the academic subjects with more real world type skills."

The National Call for Concepts for Social Finance invites organizations and individuals from across the country to submit ideas on how to improve social and economic outcomes for Canadians. Social finance is an exciting new way to encourage social innovation by creating new opportunities for investors and community organizations to partner on innovative projects and take their great ideas to a new level.