“Last year we had a cost-shared grant project that was undertaken by a local person and several adults and it started a home-based literacy program. This year the funding was cut, so we have no literacy coordinator in our community. I did submit a funding proposal to keep it going, but it was rejected. It seems unfair somehow; we spent so much time and energy raising awareness about literacy.” – Educator during Consultation

“Our literacy program went for 3 years, used peer counselors and touched 30% of the worker population. There were many success stories, better attitudes and increased self esteem. It worked very well – until the funding stopped.” – Labour representative during Consultation

• Storefront literacy and tutor drop-in centers are particularly struggling for sustainable funding. A demand for unrealistically fast results in terms of employment placement, changing criteria, and little expertise in (or time for) non-governmental fund-raising mean that many of these organizations are living on very short timeframes. They need longer-term block funding periods so they’re not spending all their time raising funds – but actually delivering the service.

• Learning Centers lamented the need for more funding to provide more hours, more venues, more tutor training, more instruction materials, etc.

• It often takes 2-3 months just to overcome an individual’s fear, then another 1-3 years to upgrade. There needs to be long enough funding and support to build their skills to a solid point.

• Community partnership initiatives take time. In order for them to succeed, funders need to agree and commit to 5 year funding blocks.

• One HRDC-funded program that was learner centered (eg. using a combination of videos, tapes, tutors, and classroom-based instruction), holistic (eg. addressed nutrition, provided transportation, offered counseling), and partnership-driven (eg. liaison with corrections and other community organizations) became so successful that it had a 40-person wait-list. Then the funding was cut.

Rigid or “Flavour of the Month” Funding…

“Literacy is studied to death, but nothing happens. Funding requests have to be tailored to the current ‘flavour’ and also involves unrealistic timeframes of 3-5 years.” – Community Development Worker during Consultation

• Often grant monies are only for specific initiatives, and then they get shut off. We heard several people refer to shifting priorities on the part of funders. Priority used to be on literacy programming … then on research … what next?

• Several representatives of programs funded by the former Ministry of Social Development and Economic Security (now the Ministry of Human Resources) reported that the criteria for funding changes on a regular basis – with the consequence that fewer people are being referred and funded to participate.

• The “moving target” of funding criteria was cited as a problem by many of the communitybased literacy program representatives we spoke with. So also was the conception on the part of government agencies as to the time successful interventions should take

• Government policy dictates that clients need career plans before they receive funding, but often they are not ready to develop career plans – or their career goals change as they learn.