28 Sep Activate Learning helps Newfoundland organization expand programming
Green Bay Community Employment Corp (GBCEC), in Green Bay, NL provides employment support for people with intellectual disabilities. Now in its 21st year, the not-for-profit serves 18 municipalities in the region. While providing job seeking support is their number one priority, the organization’s manager, Kem Young, says her clientele often needs a lot more support than just finding a job.
“Many of our clients need skills training on self-confidence, money management and stress management – even more so since the pandemic. Unfortunately, many of them don’t have the resources to access information, and if they do, they don’t know how to use the resources to access information.”
Young says she found that many of her clients were frequently asking for support with doing tasks such as applying for a driver’s license or setting up online banking, and while the organization helped clients to get those things set up, it wasn’t part of their core mandate.
This demand from the community led Young to set up a new program called the Community Access Program (CAP). Through this program, GBCEC offers a variety of workshops on a number of different topics such as digital literacy, financial literacy and health literacy.
With this new idea in mind, Young turned to the Internet to start building her programming and stumbled across Activate Learning. Activate Learning is a literacy program focused on improving the number of training opportunities for adult learners, employees and workplaces in Newfoundland and Labrador. The program offers 35 different workbooks and workshops in the areas of health literacy, financial literacy and employability and life skills.
Young says finding the program and its resources was a great help to her.
“I was going to design all the courses and PowerPoints on topics such as money management and stress management, but I didn’t have to. The program was an excellent resource for us because it already offers all the sessions that we want to offer.”
Young says that by having access to free curriculum, her time is freed up from developing the resources. As a result, she can focus on offering more sessions and ultimately reach more people.
CAP has run seven workshops since launching in March 2022, and partners with municipalities in the region to host the workshops at their facilities. Workshops are offered to everyone in the community – not just clientele with intellectual disabilities. CAP has allowed the organization to expand its audience to seniors, youth, the 2SLGBTQ+ community and other groups. Young says they’ve had great turnout to the workshops, particularly from the senior community and youth who are entering the job market.
Young says she hopes to expand the program to offer more workshops on additional topics, and also reach more municipalities. She is currently working on sourcing funding for the program.
To learn more about Activate Learning and to book workshops in your region, visit abcactivatelearning.ca.