Goals for the future

Over the past two years, learners, tutors, staff, and board members have taken part in a strategic planning process. Our objective was do find out what we:

• do well
• need to improve
• need to add to our programming to meet the needs of our learners
• need to do to remain healthy

The answers to these questions told us that we should:

• Continue to offer literacy training.
• Add training that will help learners improve their employability.
• Help learners nurture their children’s literacy skills.
• Add training such as budgeting, nutrition, and other life skills.
• Increase and diversify the organization’s funding base.

Reviewing our name

With these new directions in mind, we then looked at our name to see if it described the outcomes we wanted to achieve.

Literacy is certainly the cornerstone of what we do and will continue to be the foundation of our services. It doesn’t adequately describe the increased scope of the services we know our learners need, however. There were many other issues with our name. The word “literacy” is overused in such terms as “media literacy” and “computer literacy” and as a result has lost its relevance. Learners often objected to the word because they were embarrassed by it or didn’t understand what it meant. That was not the only problematic word in our name.

A Guild is a society for mutual aid or the pursuit of a mutual objective and it certainly describes what we are but it is now an antiquated term that few people really understand anymore.

Finally, limiting ourselves to the geographical area of the Region of Peel means that we are not able to deliver programming in other areas that may need or ask for our services.

When we asked our learners what they valued most from their time with us, they responded with:

• “I feel better about myself”
• “I have more self-confidence, self esteem”
• “I see more possibilities for myself”

It became clear to us that, for our learners, gaining literacy skills was much more profound that just learning how to read and write. It changed what learners thought and felt about themselves and their futures.

We wanted to find a name for our organization that captured that personal growth in a way that everyone could understand. That is how we arrived at Skills for Employment, Life and Family. Learners gave us very positive feedback about the name and that was very important because they are our “customers” and our name needs to mean something to them. At the Peel Literacy Guild’s annual general meeting on Sept. 14th, 2006, the membership approved changing our name to Skills for Employment, Life and Family (SELF). We think the name change will help us become stronger and more able to offer relevant programming to adult non-readers.

Change is never comfortable. We know that it will take time before Skills for Employment, Life and Family feels familiar and is recognized by others in the community. It will also take time for the organization to grow into all the possibilities that our new name offers us.

In 2007, we will implement a plan to develop a new logo and image, market our new name, and develop new program ideas. We will work to get special project funding for these activities so that no resources are taken away from the existing programs nor will we be competing with fundraising for our Centres’ activities.

We welcome any of your ideas on how we can keep the best of what exists in our learning centres now and how to expand those strengths to meet your needs in the future.