Welcome to the Aboriginal Literacy & Essential Skills Pilot Project

Below is a summary of the Aboriginal Literacy and Essential Skills (ALES) Project hosted by Literacy Victoria and funded by the Government of Canada's Office of Literacy and Essential Skills.


This pilot project helps First Nations adults build the literacy and essential skills needed to effectively contribute to their communities. This will be achieved utilizing the Canadian Council on Learning First Nations Holistic, Lifelong Learning Model , as well as direction from the WILNEW Committee (10 South Island First Nations) and other First Nations community champions.  It will be the first such comprehensive First Nations literacy/essential skills plan for Southern Vancouver Island.

All ten of the WILNEW communities will have the opportunity to be involved in our project.  These communities include:  Beecher Bay, Esquimalt Nation, Pacheedaht, Songhees, Tsawout, T’sou-ke, Malahat, Pauquachin, Tsartlip, and Tseycum.

This project has four main organizing principles:

1. First Nations communities are culturally diverse and have varied learning needs and approaches to learning.
2. A series of First Nation based literacy and essential skills levels are needed to inform all Aboriginal literacy based curriculum, assessments, learning plans, programs, and services.
3. The creation of culturally relevant First Nations literacy curriculum needs to be both clear and transparent and done in collaboration with our First Nations partners.
4. Culturally relevant individual and community First Nations learning plans are needed to foster individual and community ownership regarding literacy skill development.

This project has four main outputs:

1. Creation of a regional First Nations Literacy Framework, drawing on the First Nations Lifelong Learning Model, developed by the Canadian Council on Learning.
2. Development of culturally relevant First Nations adult literacy benchmarks.
3. Creation of innovative and culturally relevant literacy curricula.
4. Formation of individual as well as community First Nations learning plans.