It is never easy for a child to admit they aren’t sure of what’s being taught to them in school. It can be even harder for an adult to say, “I can’t do this, and I need help.” That’s where Literacy Nipissing has stepped in for the past 42 years.
“We help adults who want to upgrade their skills and/or get a GED Diploma Certificate,” says Executive Director Vandra McQuarrie. “We work with people who might have left school before they got their grade 12. We also work with people who have their high school diploma but might not know how to do a certain math that is required by their employer. So, we help them upgrade those skills.”
Since 1978 McQuarrie says they have helped approximately 5,200 learners over that time and have also worked with over 2,000 volunteers. McQuarrie has been with the Literacy organization for almost three decades herself.
“I started doing this over 28 years ago in Elliot Lake where the focus was on helping miners who had recently been laid off.”
She says the goal has always been to help people improve their life skills.
“Being able to read. If you couldn’t read, could you understand the directions that were on your prescription bottles? When the No-Name brand was introduced a lot of our students needed help because they depended on the pictures that were on the labels on the packaging or the cans in order to tell what was on there. So, there was a point where they wanted to learn how to read and that idea just evolved.”
McQuarrie says the evolution became helping people find employment, achieve personal goals, or just have a healthier lifestyle.
“That can be having your grandchildren in your life and that means we’re just helping someone figure out how to send pictures or email their family to stay in touch. Even writing an email you’re supposed to know how to write a good sentence. We’re getting people to try and benefit a broad part of their life.”
The program has expanded too, as technology and computers have advanced to being an almost every day necessity.
“We are now fully stocked with computers for our students, and believe it or not, we have some students who come in that have never even turned on a computer, even in 2020. They have lived their life being able to do what they do without one,” says McQuarrie.
“We get students who might be retired and they want to start communicating in different ways with their grandchildren, or have people access a job bank online. We’ve had to teach people from the very beginning of learning how to start up a computer, to learning Word, to sending an attachment through emails, or just how to send a picture.
"I just had to ask my co-worker how to set up a different background for a zoom meeting because I wanted it to be fancy. There are still things that some of us are learning and COVID-19 has brought a huge change and learning curve for a lot of people with online learning and meetings. Even for people who have been working all their lives.”
That brings up the fact that employment itself is a big focus for those adults who look to Literacy Nipissing for some assistance.
“The last few years have really been focused on employment and how can we get people a job. We’re finding that it's not just about answering phones anymore; the boss and all the employees have to be multi-faceted in their roles. And the workforce is very competitive and so every little bit of information you have and every extra skill you possess is going to give you that edge.”
“Literacy is kind of a misleading name because it’s not just reading that we do here,” she continues. “It has always included reading, writing, and math. If we do things in science or social studies, it is still in the context of reading and writing about it. We don’t do science experiments, believe it or not. About 99 per cent of the people who come in here say I can’t do math and I hate math, but all of a sudden, they get it and they love it because they can equate it to the real world. That’s when it really means a lot and it starts to make sense.”
McQuarrie says that reinvigorates her love for the job as seeing people “get it” is tremendously rewarding.
“I get to see that lightbulb moment happening in all these people's lives. When they first come in, they are embarrassed because they have trouble with reading or can't do math. But after a few lessons that moment happens, and they realize they can do that work or that skill and they get it. It's that self-esteem that you can just see rising and all the new worlds that are now opening because they can read and write and use a computer. It’s just fantastic.
"We always say the hardest part about coming back to school is walking through that door the first time. Once they are in here and they see how much they actually do know and how far they can go, it makes all the difference.”
After almost 30 years of helping people achieve those goals, McQuarrie has heard many different reasons why it just didn’t work out for their students when they were in school and she says the stigma about “lazy” students is one that needs to stop.
“Once we were out in the community doing an awareness piece and one of the comments I got was that “people were just too lazy in school” and that really bothered me and it bothered a student that was there because that was not his experience,” McQuarrie says.
“He had a lot of other things happening in his life such as being put in the back of the class and not hearing properly or seeing properly. There are also stories of trauma in a student's home life. We had another student whose mom had to pull him out of school because his dad died, and he had to help earn an income. We’ve heard that story quite a bit.
"Life isn’t simple and there’s a lot of reasons why people don’t succeed in school. We’ve heard stories that just break our hearts about why they didn’t continue going to school and then that pressure just builds, and they think that they could never accomplish or acquire those skills.”
McQuarrie says for a lot of people it simply comes down to learning at your own pace.
“Sometimes we’re just not ready to learn. Learning happens in all kinds of stages. Sometimes it takes someone who’s in their 60s or 70s to figure it out. You hear stories in the news all the time about a 90-year-old grandmother who finished college because that’s what was best for her and that’s when it worked best for her. It's all a matter of ‘when is this going to work for me’. But we want people in the community to know that it is absolutely never too late and everyone here is treated with dignity and respect no matter what your story is.”
Last December, Literacy Nipissing nearly had to close its doors because of a fire, but McQuarrie says the community of North Bay would not let that happen.
“After the fire that destroyed our building in December, our community in North Bay has just been fantastic. We didn’t want to close up shop and the way in which the community reached out. It helped us, help people fulfill their dreams by allowing us to stay open. I can never say thank you enough for all they did for us. It really is unbelievable to see how many people care in this community,” she says.
“We are going to have a candlelight vigil on December 20 to mark the anniversary of that fire by holding a celebration to say thank you,” adds McQuarrie. “We can’t have an open house, but we want to somehow say thank you for sticking with us and helping us start back up.”
