Many women feel the way in which we have set up our social systems work against us. They stop us from moving forward and keep us entrenched in poverty.

• Poverty seems to be the most hindering. It just kind of eats people up and drags them down.

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• A lot of the women have trouble with Children's Aid, having their children taken away... That's all very complicated, it has a lot of issues in it...

  There's one woman recently who's gone through that and she's really gone out of the program. Actually, when you think about it, it has really eliminated literacy for her because she's just personally trying to deal with what's happened to her and her tutor's there to tell her "I'll get back to you whenever you want," but she doesn't expect anything to happen because everything is just total chaos...

  But it's like a lot of things. I think it's so emotionally draining, it doesn't leave much room for learning.

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• Some won't come in for three or four days and you know they're worried about getting food on the table, or this, that, and the other thing. They don't want to come to a program, sit down and read and write.

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• [Social services] say their mandate is not education, that's the standard line. They're not in the business of providing for people to go to educational facilities. That's a crying shame. They're keeping people on their payroll for want of a few extra dollars every week to educate them, upgrade them.

  The people that come into our classes, and I'm sure all the other programs around, do not want to be on social services. They want to be able to get out and do something for themselves. I think it's very hard to not feed your kids while you're going to school. Obviously the kids are the priority.

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• In social services and housing, they will only fund one partner at a time. We've actually had instances here a young fellow and a woman have met and either started living together or gotten married and one of them had to quit school... In the three cases that I know of, it's been the woman that's quit and stayed home because of the cost.

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• We've never seen it like that before. We decided it was time for some more community visits. We better go out and find out why people aren't coming One of the women came back one time and she just sat and cried. She said "I've never seen it. People are hungry. You get to the door and you could tell. It's written all over their faces. It was just awful." That has not gone away. That has not changed.

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• The big problem is social assistance recipients who come in and have child care and transportation and drugs paid for. They get out to minimum wage in an entry level job where none of that's available. There's no incentive. Other than a guaranteed annual income, I don't know what the answer is.

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• [The economic] situation hasn't changed and as a result the clientele who are coming to our program now has changed because it affects women the hardest. So we're getting more young men now who have a reason to believe that if they are to learn to read and write and upgrade their skills, they would have better access to some kind of employment.

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