Overview:

The NWT Literacy Council was established in 1989. In 1999 when Nunavut was created, the Council split into two groups and the Nunavut Literacy Council was created. Both organizations have NGO status and both operate on a project-based framework. The two Councils currently have a joint initiative that aims to promote and support quality workforce/workplace literacy programs in the NWT. The project stakeholders are employers, trainers/educators, funders, policy makers and the two Literacy Councils.

In the context of the North, there are legal commitments to meet with regard to employing and promoting First Nations people and Inuit. In a context of a high demand for skilled labour, that sometimes means helping people to develop the underlying literacy and essential skills they need to even start on the job. Development of this project was prompted by requests from employers and colleges asking for resources, models, and examples of promising practices.

The project distinguishes between two kinds of literacy programs: those usually based in a workplace, designed to meet the needs of existing employees for a particular company or industry and those that precede labour market participation, usually preparing people more generally for the workforce. It is believed that both have an important role to play.

The literacy councils from the two territories joined forces on this project because they were dealing with similar industries (resource extraction, particularly oil and gas and diamonds), because there are commitments in both territories to meeting employment targets (impact agreements in NWT, Clause 23 in the context of Nunavut) and because many of the institutions involved in workplace and workforce literacy cross the territorial border as do some employers.

Activities to date:

• developed a discussion paper that is a “snapshot” of the state of workplace and workforce literacy in the two territories and provides some indication of the state of literacy training.
• first stakeholder meeting took place April 05 in Yellowknife
• next meeting, spring 06 to formalize collaboration and develop shared goals and coordinated strategies with regard to expanding the pool of literate and skilled workers.
• developing a compendium of resources to be available to employers and existing and potential employees in print or web-based form

The question now to be asked is, “Who is responsible for preparing a skilled northern workforce?”