Literacy Basics - Community Literacy of Ontario

Putting out the Welcome Mat

What’s in it for Me?

Successful recruitment begins with spreading the word in the right places and in the right ways in order to contact potential learners. Recruitment materials need to highlight how literacy can make a difference in people’s lives and encourage learners to participate in life-long opportunities. Potential learners need to hear a positive message about what they will gain from the training and how literacy can make a difference in their lives.

Part of the problem with recruitment is that our promotional strategies and materials can sometimes be based on mistaken assumptions about what adult students want. Remember that students come to you because of something THEY want - not something YOU think they should need or want. We have to stop thinking from our own point of view and assumptions and try instead to consider recruitment from the point of view of adult learners.

Successful promotional strategies will always answer the question: "Why should I come to your literacy agency—what is in it for me?" Does your organization think about this when it prepares its recruitment strategies and materials?

Student Voices

Current and former students are naturally a wonderful source of information on learner needs and recruitment strategies. Talk to students; find out how they learned about the program. Was it through print or radio? A referral from another agency? Use what works! You could conduct a brief survey, ask questions informally or hold a focus group with learners on this topic. As well, test out your promotional materials and strategies on current and past learners.

Sample questions to ask adult students:

• How did you find out about this program?
• What made you want to come here?
• What keeps you coming?
• What would stop you from coming?
• Would you suggest this program to others? Why or why not?
• What is most helpful to you about this program?
• What is least helpful to you about this program?
• How can we reach other adult students?

Word of Mouth

Word of mouth referral is probably the most successful way to recruit learners.

An extremely effective recruitment strategy is to involve adult students in promoting your literacy program. Adult students are a wonderful inspiration to the community at large as well as to potential learners. Word of mouth also relies on family and friends highlighting the need for literacy instruction and the availability of programs. ABC Life Literacy’s “Who Wants to Learn?” research further confirmed the importance of family and friends when it found that 32% of potential learners heard about literacy programming from family and friends.

Knowing this, encourage everyone to talk literacy up! Create opportunities by holding community presentations, writing a learner-of-the-month feature article, etc. Incorporate learner testimonials into your promotional material and invite learners to speak at community events. Encourage learners to bring a friend to social events or even to a training session. Some programs provide learners and volunteers with business cards that they can pass out when talking about literacy.

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