Battling illiteracy: pooling knowhow

« Illiteracy is one of the major factors of exclusion. This site will help youths, the unemployed and immigrants to find a training course and an association, which will ultimately put them on track to a profession. It will also be an effective tool at the disposal of social workers and the French National Employment Agency, to rapidly guide persons in difficulty to a workshop. »

Monique Maigret

Throughout the Ile-de-France area, many organizations dispense literacy courses. Public and private, big and small, these organizations nevertheless share the particular feature of working in isolation, without really communicating together, nor with the social and institutional partners. This situation produces a degree of opacity in the available programs, as well as a real problem of access to information for all those who need this training - or provide it.

Two years ago, the Paris Town Hall therefore commissioned a study aimed to identify the type of tool that would help forge a link between all these initiatives and to pool the available knowhow. In early 2008, a report recommended the development of an internet site dedicated to literacy and open to all persons interested in any respect whatsoever: learners, teachers, social partners, etc.

A site enriched with a whole range of experiences

Réseau Alpha - and its internet sites - will be launched in September 2009 and will initially employ one person as webmaster. The site will present the sector of French language learning as a whole, with a sharing of resources pertaining both to teaching for "newcomers" and teaching devoted to French speakers experiencing serious problems with reading and writing. The site, set up with the experience of the partner literacy organizations, will be enriched month by month through educational exchanges between the various organizations.

A genuine documentary resource hub, it will offer comprehensive information on the programs and tools available to the associations, municipalities, vocational training centres, and all social workers seeking effective aid for illiterate persons.
By granting financial aid to participate in the creation of this IT platform, the Veolia foundation wants to encourage this sharing of knowhow and to join the battle against economic exclusion. Réseau Alpha will initially deal exclusively with programs available in Paris, but by 2012, the experiment will be extended to the whole of Ile-de-France.
 

Other project supported

Réseau Alpha
Domain : Social et emploi
Country : France
Endowment : 28/06/2011

Promoting the learning of French for migrant adults and updating the corresponding IT tools.