Funding pressure
Posted Feb 28, 2011 04:41:36 AM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Local literacy advocates will join their colleagues from across the province in calling on Queen’s Park for more funding for literacy programs.
Today marks the second annual Literacy Awareness Day in Ontario as program providers pressure MPP’s to extend a two-year funding initiative into permanent, care funding.
Carol Risidore, Executive Director of the Literacy Group of Waterloo Region, says literacy, particularly among adults, is about more than just upgrading skills.
“It’s about having the ability to make good decisions. It’s about being able to help your children. And it’s about having the ability to exist at a level that’s higher than the minimum wage,” Risidore said in an interview with 570 News.
According to statistics from Laubach Literacy Ontario (LLO), 42% of adults in Canada do not have the minimum literacy skills to cope with everyday life and work. Of those 42%, the 15% with lowest literacy levels have serious difficulty dealing with any printed material. LLO says low literacy skills are directly linked to poverty, poor health and high unemployment.
Risidore will be attending today’s series of rallies in Toronto with several students from local adult literacy programs.
“We are meeting with MPP’s and talking about how the impact of funding or cuts will impact (students’) ability to learn and progress,” she says.
Risidore is personally responsible for 33 students in Kitchener and Waterloo, while 11 others from Cambridge remain on a waiting list that’s 6-8 weeks long. She says any cuts to current funding could leave people in this community waiting up to five months to get help at any of our local literacy agencies.
A Statistics Canada survey found that lifting literacy scores by 1% could lift labour productivity by 2.5% and raise output per capita by 1.5%. In dollars, that suggests the 1% increase in literacy scores could translate to $32-billion in the national economy.
