LLSC’s 2021 Year in Review

As we enter the new year, we wanted to take a moment to reflect on some of the things Literacy Link South Central (LLSC) accomplished in 2021.

Projects

Pathways into a Child Care and Early Years Career

The London/Middlesex area is in need of more professional Registered Early Childhood Educators (RECEs) and leaders in this field. In an effort to help solve this problem, LLSC is proud to be supporting the Pathways into a Child Care and Early Years Career program. This free program helps job seekers prepare for a career in child care, and its sister program Organizational Leadership in Early Childhood Education supports existing RECEs as they prepare for leadership roles. Both programs are available in English and French.

This project is ongoing. Learn more about it here.

Community Tech Connect

The Community Tech Connect program aims to build the confidence of digitally disengaged members of the community so they can participate in an online environment through fully accessible digital literacy training. We are pleased to be working with 7 partners across the 5 counties we serve. This project started in 2019 and was extended in 2021. Learn more about it here.

This program is funded by the Government of Canada’s Digital Literacy Exchange Program.

Ontario Works Digital Literacy Program

LLSC was fortunate to work with Ontario Works (OW) and Fanshawe College to offer OW clients digital literacy training to support both life stabilization and employment. Several cohorts successfully completed the training, and participants received a free laptop upon program completion. We hope to be able to start this program back up again this year when COVID-19 restrictions are lifted.

Job Creation Partnerships

LLSC sponsored two Job Creation Partnerships this year!

The Ontario Job Creation Partnership (JCP) program provides funding to employers that support projects that are distinct from the organization’s normal day-to-day operations while creating opportunities for eligible job seekers to gain meaningful work experience.

Pandemic Planning Manual

The purpose of this project was to create a well-researched, valuable, and easy-to-use Pandemic Planning Manual for community-based non-profits. The team was comprised of 6 participants, and it ran from November 2020 – April 2021.

Read more about this project and access the manual here.

Digitization Project

The purpose of this project is to digitize and make traditional paper-based and electronic adult literacy materials available and accessible for practitioners and tutors across the province of Ontario to use in virtual teaching. The team is comprised of 10 participants who started in February 2021 and will finish this month (January 2022). A special thank you goes out to Carolina Cohoon from CNIB Deafblind Community Services, who was an invaluable asset as the project’s Consultant for Accessibility and Universal Design for Learning (UDL).

Read more about this project and access the resources here (there will be more added soon).

Thank you so much to Jeremy Marks for leading both of these projects, and to all of the wonderful participants. 

Celebrations

LLSC had two major milestones to celebrate this year!

Summer’s Council of the Federation Literacy Award

If you follow LLSC on social media, you will have seen that our staffer Summer Burton was the winner of the 17th annual Council of the Federation Literacy Award for Ontario! This award recognizes one individual from each of Canada’s provinces and territories for exceptional achievement, innovative practice, and excellence in literacy. Congratulations to Summer on this outstanding accomplishment!

Tamara Celebrates her 25th Anniversary with LLSC

Congratulations to LLSC’s fearless leader Tamara Kaattari on 25 amazing years of service as the Executive Director. Tamara is extremely dedicated to the field of Adult Literacy and has accomplished so much in her 25 years. We are so grateful to work with her and learn from her.

Thanks for reading!

We can’t wait to see what 2022 has in store.