In 2015-16 we made 13 employer grants to improve literacy and numeracy in the Tasmanian workforce.
Burnie Community House will use their 26TEN grant to help develop easy to read manuals and procedures for the Hilltop Fresh Produce Project. The project provides accredited food production and preparation training to people with disabilities and low levels of literacy. The learning is designed so that volunteers gain accredited skills while doing their volunteer work. Using food grown in their Burnie Community House market garden, the kitchen also prepares food for the Hilltop Café and the Community House, as well as catering for events.
Burnie Community House is a not for profit organisation that provides a community meeting place for company, advice and support. Some of the programs currently running at the House include cooking classes, support groups, parenting and craft classes.
Emmerton Park will use their 26TEN grant to improve the digital literacy skills of their employees. This will increase accuracy when electronically delivering and reporting the care provided to residents. Due to ever increasing technology, times have changed for workers in all areas of the Park. Some employees will learn how to write plain English procedures for the wide range of activities done by Emmerton Park staff including the laundry, catering and cleaning areas. There will also be some one-to-one training for employees who request it.
Emmerton Park is a not-for-profit organisation in Smithton on the North West Coast of Tasmania. It provides a range of aged care services and facilities including residential care, community care and the Commonwealth Home Support Program. Their philosophy is that all citizens have the right to live with dignity, respect, peace and freedom of choice within a community they can call home.
Staff at Goodstart Early Learning communicate with families through an online portal called Storypark. The 26TEN grant will provide training for carers and educators to improve their written and digital skills.
Goodstart Early Learning is an Australia wide not-for-profit organisation that provides childcare and preschool services. It has nine centres in Tasmania. Its mission is to provide high-quality, accessible and affordable early learning to allow children to have a good start in life.
Houston’s Farm's grant is for their ‘People Development Project’. The aims of the project are to make written communication and instruction in the organisation easier to understand. New resources will be provided to better manage and simplify business documents. This will increase employees’ knowledge and give them more confidence to work at a higher level. An adult literacy program for individual employees will also be offered.
The grant builds on a previous grant to the Farm. In 2015, Jade was one of the first Houston’s Farm employees to take advantage of the adult literacy program offered at the farm, you can see Jade’s story here. Houston’s Farm is a Tasmanian owned family business that grows, harvests, washes and packs ready to eat salads and herbs. They employ over 300 people in Tasmania and throughout Australia. The business values include innovation, integrity, sustainability, caring and teamwork.
JBS will use their 26TEN employer grant to rewrite job descriptions and task descriptions in easy to understand plain English. They will develop the technical writing skills of some employees so that easy to understand workplace documentation is ongoing. This grant will also continue the support offered from a previous grant, to help some workers with reading skills.
JBS Australia is a meat processing company that has two facilities in Tasmania. One is located in Devonport and the other at Longford. They believe that a key to remaining competitive in a tight economic market is to make sure that their workforce have the skills and knowledge required to effectively perform their jobs.
Launceston City Mission will use their 26TEN grant to rewrite their work health and safety documents and workplace signage in Easy English. This will ensure that staff, volunteers and clients understand workplace messages about safety. They would like all staff to learn easy English skills so that it can be used in all workplace practices. At the same time, staff and volunteers will have the opportunity to improve their reading, writing and maths skills, especially what they need for the work they are doing.
Launceston City Mission provides services and support to Tasmanians in the North and North West affected by poverty, addiction, social isolation, abuse, homelessness and mental illness. The Mission, which is a not for profit, non-denominational Christian organisation, has a workforce of over 400 people in paid and voluntary roles.
National Disability Services (NDS) received a 26TEN grant to implement their plan for the disability sector workforce, ‘Tasmanian Disability Sector language, literacy and numeracy skills action plan 2016-2017’. Training will be provided to organisations to simplify workplace documents. Supervisors will learn how to practically support staff who have difficulty completing their work due to poor literacy skills. Some staff will receive one-to-one training to improve their reading and writing skills.
NDS is Australia’s peak body for non-government disability service organisations. They provide information, training and resources to member organisations who range in size from support groups to multi-services providers.
The North West Football League is using a 26TEN grant to help volunteers build the skills to run a modern footy club. The League wants to attract more volunteers and make sure they stay longer by developing their skills and using well-written procedures. The League has eight clubs, each with large memberships that provide social and economic benefits in their communities.
Starting Point Neighbourhood House will use their 26TEN grant to support learning for adults in the local community. The project, called Link-Up!, will improve the literacy and numeracy skills of local volunteers and then train them to be mentors and literacy tutors. By having local community members support other members it will be easier to overcome stigma and disadvantage.
Starting Point Neighbourhood House was formerly called Ravenswood Neighbourhood House and is located in the Eastern suburbs of Launceston. It covers the key communities of Ravenswood, Waverley and St Leonards. Their focus is on developing and sharing local community assets. They have a range of educational and recreational programs, an Op Shop and Community Garden.
The 18 Vinnies shops in the southern region are being computerised which means a move from a hard copy order and stock control system to a digital one. The Society’s 26TEN grant is for ‘Vinnies Digital Learning’. Workshops will be held at each shop to teach staff and volunteers the skills they need to complete daily tasks and to use the new system. As well as allowing Vinnies to move successfully to a computer based system, the training will increase the ability of the volunteers to look for paid employment.
St Vincent de Paul Society Tasmania is a not for profit organisation that operates state-wide. They offer a range of services including emergency financial assistance, food support, a Men’s Shed and support to migrants. The Vinnies shops which sell second hand clothing and goods, has 380 volunteer and paid staff.
TasNetworks has received a 26TEN grant for its Career Pathways Project. The grant will help its workforce learn how to use new computer software that will see significant changes in the way TasNetworks team members work, including a huge reliance on IT platforms (such as tablets) and team members completing all in-field “paperwork” on these new platforms.
The grant will also be used to develop cue cards and guidelines for team members using the new software for their daily reporting. Also, hardware instructions, guidelines and equipment manuals will be written in plain English.
At the same time, team members who need to develop particular reading, writing or maths skills to do their job will be able to work with an adult literacy specialist.
This is the second grant for TasNetworks so it can build on the significant achievements from its first grant.
TasNetworks is a Tasmanian Government organisation that manages the electricity transmission and distribution networks in Tasmania. It establishes new connections, responds to faults and outages, reads and replaces meters, and provides information about electrical safety. TasNetworks also offers nationally accredited training to apprentices, sub-contractors, councils and construction organisations.
The Tasmanian School Canteen Association received a 26TEN grant for their project called ‘Make it Tasty – share it around’. School canteen managers will learn how to use simple business tools to control their stock and work out the cost of their recipes. Canteen managers will be encouraged to cook using local and seasonal foods and to share recipes amongst fellow canteen managers.
The Tasmanian School Canteen Association is a not for profit, non-government organisation. The Association offers advice to public and private schools about healthy eating, food safety and hygiene and financial management of canteens. They encourage schools to take part in the Canteen Accreditation Program.
Wide Angle Tasmania received a 26TEN grant for their ‘Screen Access’ project. They will develop a set of easy to read and understand contracts to be used by Tasmanians involved in film and video projects. For example, the contracts can be used by paid and volunteer actors, crew members and property owners. They will also develop easy to read and understand protocols to use when working with children on screen projects.
Wide Angle Tasmania is a not for profit organisation that provides support, training and equipment hire to emerging practitioners in film and video production. They currently have 350 members state-wide and have over 5000 requests for advice or referral each year.