The pandemic has been difficult for everyone, especially adults with low literacy skills who have had no access to traditional in-classroom learning support.
A national literacy charity, called ABC Life Literacy Canada, has launched a new online skills hub to provide free courses to adult learners during this critical time.
It’s called the ABC Skills Hub and was created for adult learners who are looking to improve their digital literacy along with their money and work skills.
“How we learn and when we can learn has changed hugely in the last year so the ABC Skills Hub is one of the first online portals designed specifically for people with lower literacy,” says ABC Life Literacy Canada Executive Director, Mack Rogers.
“It is really difficult to learn if what you are trying to learn is inaccessible so the Skills Hub is really critical in allowing people to build those skills,” says Rogers.
“Right now we have four modules up for financial literacy and workplace literacy, so skills you would use in the workplace. Every few weeks we add another module and it’s all free.”
Rogers says the Skills Hub was designed to support the most vulnerable Canadians, as people with low literacy skills often struggle with mental health, unemployment or other barriers.
“Literacy is a staggering problem that no one talks about — 48 per cent of Canadians have literacy rates that fall below the high school level so that is almost half of us,” says Rogers.
Whereas, 17 per cent of Canadians function at the lowest level where they may, for example, be unable to read the dosage instructions on a medicine bottle.
In terms of numeracy, 54.7 per cent of adult Canadians score in the two lowest skill levels in numeracy, which is over half of the adult population.
Rogers says improving literacy can impact someone’s quality of life as it may allow them to spend time reading with a grandchild, for example, or in terms of financial literacy, help them access a lower interest rate.
However, he adds the impact of improving literacy goes beyond the individual as it has a positive effect on the country as a whole.
“If we increase the literacy rate in Canada by just one per cent it will hugely impact Canada as a nation,” says Rogers. “Basically everyone’s lives will get better if we can improve literacy.”
The new Skills Hub is self-directed so people can go online and take the course anytime they want with each course being about two-hours long but users can work at their own pace, save their work, and also download the course content.
ABC Life Literacy also works with partners across the country and has been partnered with the Prince George Native Friendship Centre (PGNFC) to run the financial literacy program Money Matters specifically for Indigenous people.
Money Matters is integrated into the new Skills Hub, but the charity is also working on adding teacher and organization portals, where teachers can set up “virtual classrooms” for learners, and where organizations can keep track of multiple teachers and groups of learners across a variety of courses.
Rogers says this allows the organization to support its community partners like the PGNFC.
“Once we have the teacher back end built, which will be in the next couple of months, the really exciting part is that our partner organizations will be able to track, monitor and assist their learners as they run the programs.”
Rogers says the ABC Skills Hub will also be adding another 12 to 14 courses throughout the year in both English and French.
You can access the ABC Skills Hub for free online.
