Training and education after the secondary school years has traditionally been focused on entry, and, to a lesser extent career change. The points of re-entry and retirement have not until recently been recognized as needing special attention. Although retirement is still mostly ignored, the Canadian Jobs Strategy Re-entry Program has provided an important and much-needed focus for education for women who have been out of the work force for some time. There are some serious problems with the structure of the program -- principally its proposal development and acceptance process, its trainee admission criteria, the short length of the training component of the program, and the bias within the program toward training for jobs which, while they may offer the opportunity for speedy entry, also have drawbacks related to low pay, vulnerability to technological change and the whole constellation of factors associated with low quality work. In spite of the problems these shortcomings create, sponsors in locations across the country have found ways to make excellent use of the program. In Newfoundland and Labrador, for instance, one Re-entry program is training women as painters and plasterers in St. John's; while in Labrador, another is focusing on entrepreneurial skills. In Vancouver, a program is providing women with training in setting up co-operatives; while in Ottawa, The Canadian Council on Social Development has sponsored a program training in social research, with special emphasis on the use of computer and telecommunication technologies.

4.3.7 Education for Women's Work Across the Boundaries
Between Formal and Informal Economies:

Although some Re-entry programs recognize and attempt to build on the skills that are developed in the informal economy -- at home, and that are also useful in the formal economy -- on the job, there are few programs which reflect in their structure the truly integrated nature of work in women's lives. Training which explicitly seeks to identify and develop skills which span the artificial divisions between paid and unpaid work is an essential element of the kind of transformative education our interviewee's described. And while it will emerge in response to increased visibility and more accurate valuing of work done in the informal economy, it will also support and extend the process of change that creates new values and new visibility. It is not surprising then, that at this time, we were able to find relatively little evidence of this approach to education. Nor is it surprising that when we did find it, it was in northern and native communities where, as in farming, going to work and going home often means arriving at the same place. One example that we found was in Labrador, where the Goose Bay Women's Centre is cooperating with the local Social Services Department in sponsoring a training program for women in traditional Labrador crafts.

The program accepted its first trainees in June of 1987 and will continue to November 1987. The goals are to supplement the income of women on social assistance, and to provide the women with skills that will enable them eventually to become self-supporting.

The program is aimed at training women in traditional Labrador crafts which are very popular with the large number of tourists coming into the area. The two coordinators at the Women's Centre provide guidance and classes on assertiveness training, self-esteem, business management and other related topics. The six women who are in the program come to the Centre 2-3 days a week for these classes and to work together to learn a variety of the crafts. The other days they work in their own homes. The women draw from each others' experiences, and as a result, much of the learning and the teaching is from themselves. The products they make use mostly recycled materials. The group includes a broad range of women -- from a very young single mother to a middle-aged grandmother. The women are finding that they can combine income- generating work and family at the same time. They are also learning to work and co-operate with other women to reach similar goals.