Visits were made to seven literacy classes to make contact with current participants. Five of the classes were community college-based and two of the classes were other community-based. Four of the classes were part of Camosun College's programming and one was part of Malaspina College. Three of the Camosun College classes came under the Basic Academic Skills Development Program (BASD) which takes in people at the lower Fundamental ABE level. These classes were scheduled at different times, one was an early morning class, one was late morning-early afternoon, and the third was an evening class. Each class had a different instructor, but all were held in the same room on the main campus. The fourth class was a pilot program, co-sponsored between the College's Community Education Services and the Saanich Indian School Board. It was held on the reserve about 20 kilometres outside of Victoria in the Saanich peninsula. The program is funded through the Canadian Job Strategy.

The Malaspina College program was also a pilot program and was offered in a downtown building separate from the other college programs. The population in this program had been characterized as "hard-core welfare recipients". The two pilot programs had a longer day than the other classes and offered life skills as well as literacy or academic skills training. The other three college classes concentrated on the literacy and math skills.

The other two programs visited were a class at READ, a community-based non-profit program, and the Adult Learning Centre of the Sooke School District (School District 62). Group discussions were held at all sites except Sooke where the interviews were one-on-one. Some students from other classes or programs in the province also volunteered for one-on-one interviews for a total of nine participants as defined for this study. Three were male and six were female.

CLASS DISCUSSIONS

The focus of the discussions was oriented to how the participants came to be in class; what made it easy; what made it difficult; and the suggestions they had for increasing participation in programs.