ABC Life Literacy Canada is now offering their ‘Up Skills For Work’ program for free through the Orillia and District Literacy Council.
Last year, ABC ran nine workshops and supported 135 learners in Orillia. Offering free literacy programs to citizens is an opportunity to strengthen the community, says ABC executive director, Mack Rogers.
“We really want to focus on core skills or foundational skills to help people change and adapt in the workplace. You also need these skills to obtain jobs,” he said.
The Up Skills For Work program focuses on employability skills such as motivation, attitude, accountability, teamwork, and time management.
“Those are really important kinds of things you didn’t learn in school, and things you may not know if they are a strength of yours or something you can work on,” Rogers explained.
“We try to get people to think about what it looks like to be someone who is good at teamwork, how do you talk to your team to make sure you are being inclusive and open to new ideas? It’s really an opportunity to break down the key skills that we need for every job.”
Rogers says the program gives people an opportunity to reflect on themselves from a new perspective.
“We get people to say 'Hey, am I good at being confident in the workplace? Do I present well? Am I using appropriate language for the workplace? Am I showing up on time?'
"Really being able to identify these things about yourself in the workplace, and also being able to talk about it with your employer and give people the language and the confidence to say, 'this is a skill we all have and need', is really the key thing,” he explained.
People who have taken similar programs at ABC have shown improved confidence and improved management of their skills.
“We all have skills that we can work on and we just have to ask our family and friends what’s our best skill? And what is a skill we can work on? We should always be open to seeing what we can work on and what we can get better at,” Rogers said.
ABC programs are designed to be accessible for all walks of life and skill levels, Rogers says.
“We’ve written these programs so they are accessible to a lot of Canadians. They are written at an accessible level, and they are introductory,” he said.
“It has nothing to do with what your job is, how much money you make, or how much education you have, everybody should be thinking about their employability skills.”
Rogers says the ABC program is a resource that all Canadians should consider using during a time when a lot of people are facing unstable or no employment.
“There are a million Canadians out of work right now, a lot of us are changing jobs, a lot of us are training for new jobs, or the job that we are in has changed, so it’s thinking about all this change and what are the foundational skills that you have to navigate it,” he said.
For people who want to take advantage of the program in Orillia, they can connect with the Orillia District Literacy Council for more information on their in-person workshops. For people who would prefer to learn online, they can visit abcskillshub.ca.
“Everything we do is free, there is no charge, it’s just about taking a couple of hours and trying it,” Rogers said.
