Community Knowledge Centre - Toronto Community Foundation

About this organization

Mission

Creating a strong culture of community engagement through capacity-building, progressive learning and innovative training.

History of Organization

Formerly known as East End Literacy, the organization was founded in 1979 as a community-based literacy organization serving the downtown east-side of Toronto. Over the past 3 decades, the organization has seen a growing demand in learning programs and economic opportunities. In response to this growing community need, CCL&D’s curriculum has now expanded to not only provide adult literacy programs, but to accommodate a wide-range of individuals in need of academic upgrading, leadership training and skills development, serving the various communities in Toronto.

In October 2006, EEL was granted permission by the Ministry of Consumer Affairs to change its name to Toronto Centre for Community Learning & Development (CCL&D). Through CCL&D programs such as Immigrant Women Integration Program (IWIP) and Academic Upgrading (Literacy & Basic Skills), and continued efforts on enhancing capacity building, CCL&D hopes to bring about even more positive social change in concert with other community organizations.

CCL&D is an organization committed to providing a wide-rage of training and education programs for Toronto communities, to facilitate continuing education, skills training and enhancement, economic opportunities, and community engagement.

Accolades and Accomplishments

Since 1979, CCL&D’s Academic Upgrading Program (Literacy & Basic Skills) has been achieving good success rate in transitioning students to further education, training or employment.

From its roots as a community-based literacy organization, CCL&D launched the Immigrant Women Integration Program (IWIP) in 2002.  IWIP addresses issues of immigrant isolation, lack of culturally sensitive services, and language barriers that face new immigrants as they attempt to get started in Toronto. The focus and emphasis of this training is on neighbourhood engagement and leadership development.  Trainees consistently demonstrate increased skills and play significant roles in facilitating access to services and improved social outcomes for themselves, other newcomer women and their families.  Each year, 90 to 95% of trainees find employment after program completion. Through the trainees, CCL&D has been able to provide support and information to women and families who speak English and a variety of languages/dialects.

In 2006, IWIP was recognized as a Vital Idea by the Toronto Community Foundation. Vital Ideas is based on TCF's Vital Signs® framework, and recognizes initiatives that improve Toronto’s quality of life.

Alfred Jean-Baptiste, CCL&D’s Executive Director, has been raising public awareness and understanding of literacy issues. CCL&D has helped raise the profile of literacy education in Toronto and increase accessibility to academic upgrading programs under his leadership and creative approach to adult learning. In 2004, he was conferred an Honorary Member of the Golden Key International Honour Society, Ryerson University Chapter, and became the one of honoured recipients of 2008 Council of the Federation Literacy Award for the Province of Ontario.

Programs

>Immigrant Women Integration Program (IWIP)

Immigrant Women Integration Program  (IWIP): A one-year intensive training course for immigrant women with focus and emphasis on community engagement and leadership development.

Participants are trained to strengthen their analysis of issues, develop their knowledge of governance structures, build their capacity to organize, and participate in local organizations and/or public institutions. Trainees receive structured coaching and participate in sessions, dialogues, critical reflections and other activities to develop their skills, knowledge, attitudes and values.

Academic Upgrading (Literacy & Basic Skills): For individuals (adults) with a desire to improve their academic abilities:  reading, writing, numeracy, communication management, and computer skills that will enable them to proceed to further education and training, or employment. The program is student-centred, and goal-oriented, tailored to each individual’s training plan.

Civic Engagement and Community Development Initiative (CECDI): A part-time community-based training program that piloted in 2010. The program runs for 6 months and takes up to 15 residents from Regent Park, Moss Park and St. James Town. CECDI trains these residents to learn about today’s most pressing issues in Canadian neighbourhoods and their crucial role in solving these problems by becoming civic members of their communities. Through this initiative, we hope to develop a cadre of up to 15 lead community facilitators with increased awareness, knowledge, community engagement skills and a commitment in playing a meaningful role in facilitating the development of skills and knowledge of others to engage in community development and/or become more active citizens.

Youth Empowering Parents (YEP): Youth Empowering Parents is considered a model of social innovation. We offer English and computer courses to low-English speaking adults – but in an untraditional way. Traditional classrooms consist of one educator delivering lessons to a group of students. At YEP, the educator instead provides teaching guidelines to a group of youth volunteers, and then facilitates a classroom in which youth do the majority of the teaching. For every newcomer adult, there is one youth who speaks the same language as them in order to provide one-on-one tutoring.

Clear Language and Design (CLAD): An integrated fee-for-service division geared toward raising public awareness around the impact of inaccessible language on the population in general, but more specifically on people with low literacy skills.  Through this service CLAD continues to work with public and private sector organizations (including pharmaceutical companies, the City of Toronto, Ministry of Health & Long-term Care, just to name a few) to help make their materials more accessible to their own staff and the general public.  

Digital Storytelling Toronto: CCL&D’s Digital Storytelling unit is a new and innovative partnership, supporting the goal of assisting people in using the tools of digital media to craft, record, share, and value the stories of individuals and communities, in ways that improve lives.  It supports CCL&D’s strategic priority of building high quality training/services relevant to today’s technology.

Immigrant Women Integration Program (IWIP)

Immigrant Women Integration Program (IWIP) is a community leadership development initiative, designed to support efforts to accelerate change and solve social problems (such as poverty reduction, racial equity, community safety), and help improve the quality of life in underserved and under-resourced communities. It is an investment in individuals who are interested in developing their awareness and capacity to change what is happening in their communities.

IWIP was formed in 2002 to reduce the number of newcomer women in the community who experience isolation and enhance their capacity to access resources, information and services that will help to increase their independence and/or employability. The program addresses issues of immigrant isolation, lack of culturally sensitive services, and language barriers that face new immigrants as they attempt to get started in Toronto.

The focus and emphasis of this training is on neighbourhood engagement and leadership development. Through IWIP, newcomer women in the community are able to strengthen their analysis of issues, develop their knowledge of governance structures, build their capacity to organize, and participate in local organizations and/or public institutions.

Program Impact

Individual: Through training, conducting workshops and internships, the program builds the individual capacity of the trainees.  And while employment is not specified as a direct outcome, majority of graduates of the program have found jobs as a direct result of their training.

Community: As the trainees apply what they learn in the training and conduct their outreach, workshops and seminars, and leadership circles, they help to expand the knowledge-base of more immigrant women and their families, expand their networks, increase their access to resources and strengthen the sense of community, the building blocks of social capital.

Service Agencies: The internship component of the program at such agencies, there is value added to the capacity to the agencies to expand their links and relationships with newcomer communities.  One obvious advantage is the opportunity to make to make programs and services accessible to more culturally and linguistically diverse segments of the community.

Toronto's Vital Signs® indicator(s) addressed by Program

“Sense of belonging grows in Toronto, but the Region’s diversity is still not reflected in its leadership:

• Most Torontonians feel they belong to their local community, but discrimination erodes a sense of identification with Canada.
• Visible minorities are under-represented in most leadership positions in the Greater Toronto area.
• Appointments of women to the governing bodies of agencies increased from 30% in 2004, to 47% 2007 and 49% in 2008.
• In 2009, Toronto established an Office of Civic Engagement to increase the diversity of representation in the City’s decision-making processes.” (Toronto’s Vital Signs®, 2009)

Participant Vignette

Despite her initial disappointment, Joanna continued searching for answers towards a better career path, one that would capitalize on her experience in China as a teacher; she came across the Immigrant Women’s Integration Program (IWIP). It was here that that Joanna began to see potential for a professional future.

“IWIP focuses on the leadership and development training for immigrant women especially on community development engagement. In China, I was a computer science teacher, so naturally I want to help others with my knowledge,” Joanna says.

The sense of community and the culture of support received at IWIP also helped Joanna gain the necessary confidence and perspective she needed to pursue her career.

“Through training, I learned skills and gained knowledge from the instructors at CCL&D. My communication skills were greatly improved and I became more confident. I studied and worked not only individually but also in a team,” Joanna recalls.

Joanna is now employed as a Training Manager for a newcomer training organization, and says she has successfully transferred her past professional knowledge to her current community service work.

Joanna says that for her, the Community Capacity Building and Neighbourhood Engagement program is one part of the IWIP program that resonated most with her. She also worked on Community Needs Assessment that helped her investigate the issues facing her community, and how to solve them by using Theory of Change model and critical thinking. More importantly, this is where she also learned the difference between community development and community capacity building.

When asked what her biggest challenge was, Joanna answers, “It was how to use the critical thinking in learning and working. As a community worker, we must understand that not everything happens logically. We need use critical thinking to analyze and solve the social problems.”

For Joanna Hong, being able to overcome initial difficulties and surpass her immigrant expectations by not only improving her skills and experience but by also giving back to the community is a truly great achievement. She hopes her story will inspire others to persevere in their careers.

“I benefited a lot from CCL&D for the spirit of cooperative teamwork and the spirit of dedicating to community development in my life.”