National Adult Literacy Database

January 11, 2010

This week, our story comes to us from Toronto, Ontario. The author, Jeraldo, is enrolled at the Back to Basics program at the Fred Victor Centre in downtown Toronto. The Centre's mission is to offer a continuum of community services, housing options and advocacy for adults who are experiencing homelessness, marginalization and poverty. They offer a drop-in program to help adults with basic literacy to college preparation in reading, writing, math, science and computers. The Toronto District School Board LBS department provides ongoing and regular supports to tutors and with assessments at the Back to Basics program.

Story

by Jeraldo

I am with a social worker right now, and they sent me to study. So now I am taking a course called 'career pathways'. So I will be taking this course beginning December, and hopefully it will be helpful for my future, so I can get a better job. That is my main goal.

I have been in Canada for 20 years. I was working in Calgary for 10 years. I moved to Toronto 9 years ago. Before I was working as a security guard, construction, painter. I did so many jobs. I have almost 20 years working in Canada, but now I am almost 52 years old, I cannot work in construction anymore. Because I know my body, I know what my body can do, so I have to think about my future. I am 52 and very soon I will be 55 and then I am almost 60.

I need to find a non-physical job, so I took this course. The more knowledge I have, the better it will be for this society. I need to learn something. So I am taking this course because I need to learn and more so, to have more knowledge, because you know, in this world, everything is about computers, and I don't know anything about computers. It is necessary to know computers to go onto the job market. Everything is computers. It is a fact.

Where do people like me go? They go to welfare, they are on the streets, they are in the shelters. They are, how can I say, parasites. This is what is going to happen. They don't have any skills, they don't know how to contribute. If I don't want to become a parasite on this country, my goal is to have a skill. If I don't have a skill, I won't be noticed. So the government has to do something for this society, to help the people like me.

They can put me in a school, to have a phone. They can borrow me money to attend a school, and when I am done and am working, I can pay it back. Myself, I cannot do it, because I don't have nothing. I am only myself, alone, alone. So, if my goal is to get an education, and they say you can get it by yourself, I don't buy that. If the government doesn't help the people like me, who is going to help us. If they don't care, what is going to happen to society.

[This story was taken with permission, from Incoming, published by Metro Toronto Movement for Literacy (MTML), November 2009.]