When it comes to supporting people with basic education needs, a particular challenge lies in targeting them specifically and motivating them to participate in learning opportunities, a task that also plays a central role in the projects supported by GrundbildungsPFADE.
This interview is one in a series showing how the Netzwege and Berko projects approach participant acquisition and needs assessment for their basic education pathways. The projects report on their procedures, outreach strategies and specific approaches to target groups, as well as their practices for identifying needs. This provides practical insights into social, space-oriented and work-oriented approaches. In the third part of the series, Dr Johannes Bonnes reports on how the Competence Centre supports and accompanies the practical work of the funded projects.
Lesen und Schreiben e.V. is one of three cooperation partners. Together with Arbeit und Leben Berlin-Brandenburg gGmbH and Stiftung Grundbildung Berlin, they are designing the project „Berliner Kooperationsverbund Arbeitsorientierte Grundbildung“ (BerKo) (Berlin Cooperation Network for Work-Oriented Basic Education).
Project Berko aims to establish a cooperation network for work-oriented basic education that will have a long-term, sustainable impact and be self-sustaining. One of its tasks is to better enable network participants to offer tailor-made services. Companies, advice centres and education providers can request Berko's expertise. They offer expert discussions, qualifications and, if necessary, additional resources. Berko's project-related ‘participant acquisition’ is primarily aimed at companies and organisations.
Lesen und Schreiben e.V. (LuS) works as an educational provider directly with the target group of people with low literacy skills and runs learning programmes. In the following interview, they talk about outreach strategies and general challenges in attracting participants in the field of literacy and basic education.
What approach do you take to encourage people to participate in your project?
In order to attract participants, it is essential to create an appealing and accessible programme. Our free courses offer a friendly and appreciative atmosphere in which the target group feels welcome and safe. This should be visible in our external communications and also be experienced by people when they contact us. For those for whom our offer is not suitable, we endeavour to offer alternatives in order to provide them with the best possible support in their desire to attend a course.
The main objective is to maintain the motivation of those who have set out on this journey.
We value continuity and reliability, e.g. through local presence, a central telephone number and designated contact persons.
We use a variety of methods for our public relations work. Word of mouth plays a decisive role. In addition to multipliers, current and former participants are of central importance. They can directly address those affected in their environment from a different position and also provide insight into what we offer. Anyone who wishes to do so can use our flyers, which present the most important information about the current course offerings in a simple manner and are available in both analogue and digital formats. We also provide information on Instagram, Facebook and our website, where we regularly share insights into our work. Especially at the beginning of a new learning programme, we send circular emails to our network, in particular to contact persons in job centres and advice centres, and ask them to distribute the information. Platforms such as Nebenan or classified ads can also be useful for acquisition.
We are easy to find online via Google search – the name Lesen und Schreiben e.V. works in our favour here. Attending specialist events and raising awareness among multipliers – whether on the phone or through contributions at events – also help to raise awareness of the issue in general and our services in particular.
In addition, we are listed in the Alfa telephone directory and in Berlin in the Basic Education Atlas (Grundbildungsatlas) of the Stiftung Grundbildung Berlin. We are active in the Alphabündnis to promote networking and visibility in Berlin-Neukölln, where Lesen und Schreiben e.V. has been based since its inception in 1983. There we meet regularly, exchange information and organise public relations and awareness-raising campaigns on the topic of basic education in the district. For campaigns in public spaces, we are happy to book the Alfa-Mobil of the Bundesverband Alphabetisierung und Grundbildung.
In the immediate neighbourhood, we work together with local institutions such as neighbourhood management organisations and community mothers, and take part in street and neighbourhood festivals. We always have flyers in our pockets. Basic education is a cross-cutting issue, which is why we also keep an eye on other areas and networks, from job coaches to advice centres, libraries, health centres and consumer advice centres. Depending on the opportunity and resources available, we raise awareness and publicise learning opportunities.
This enables us to draw the attention of different people to our services and make it easier for those affected to find their way to our courses. However:
Attracting participants goes hand in hand with raising social awareness of low literacy in general – it is manual labour.
Are there any particular outreach strategies or specific practices or approaches for the three target groups (low-literate job seekers, low-literate trainees at risk of dropping out of training, and low-literate employees at risk of losing their jobs)? Whose support is needed to identify, reach and motivate these people?
As a provider of basic education and a point of contact for those affected and multipliers, we record the needs that people contact us about. Learning opportunities must be tailored to the living conditions of the target group. For example, we offer a day course with 16 hours per week and an evening course with only 6 hours per week in the early evening. Individual work is particularly important here, as participants are not always able to attend regularly due to shift work and other factors in their working lives. Because we are in direct or indirect contact with the employers of our evening course participants, word of mouth spreads not only in their private lives, but also within their companies.
It is crucial to have a suitable offer, to develop one, or to know of a suitable offer to which the person can be referred. This requires a great deal of commitment, information and knowledge, discussions and, overall, sufficient human and financial resources in advance.
How do you assess the learning needs of your target groups?
In a course consultation prior to participation, we ask for key information about previous knowledge, school attendance and professional experience, as well as preferences regarding learning to read and write. Part of this course consultation is a writing test, which gives us an initial idea of the person's writing skills.
Throughout the course, we continuously assess learning needs. We do this through observation and discussion, both on an individual level in reading, writing and arithmetic, as everyone has very different prior knowledge, areas for improvement and learning speeds, and in the learning groups, where we ask about needs in the areas of basic education and using the internet and digital media.
What are the biggest challenges you face in attracting participants, and how do you deal with them?
A major challenge in attracting participants is that we often don't know whether and how our advertising measures are actually being received.
We cannot ask questions of people who do not identify themselves and do not come forward. Public relations efforts should address two target groups as far as possible: multipliers and those affected. However, it is always necessary to consider carefully how content, language complexity and layout should be used in each case. On social media in particular, people with low literacy skills tend to be consumers of content rather than interactors – whether through likes, shares or comments. This makes it difficult to obtain feedback and assess reach. Nevertheless, we consider our presence in the digital world to be important, as both our experience with participants and the available research show that people with low literacy skills use social media. Regular evaluations of our followers provide us with at least a little guidance.
It also remains difficult to understand why more people find their way to us in certain phases than in others. This makes it almost impossible to clearly evaluate individual acquisition channels. We know that there is no simple solution here. Rather, it is an ongoing issue that we are continuously addressing – with openness to new ideas and an eye on social developments that also influence our field.
One advantage we can leverage in this context is our long-standing presence: we have been operating at the same location for over 40 years. This has made us well known in Berlin's basic education landscape and given us visibility that we continue to benefit from today.
