2019-20 ANNUAL REPORT REACHING BEYOND THE SCHOOLS TO SUPPORT OUR COMMUNITY Community Services MISSION STATEMENT Community Services’ mission is to develop and deliver MISSION services that support a diverse clientele to achieve STATEMENT their settlement, employment, language and skills development goals. • Service Excellence – Enhancing responsiveness and providing high quality services through service excellence to support our clients and learners to achieve their goals GUIDING • Collaboration – Working together as a team and developing partnerships PRINCIPLES both internally and externally to respond to shared challenges and goals. • Innovation – Fostering a culture of innovation and creative thinking in order to deliver high quality services and strengthen staff. • Respect – Listening and treating each other with respect; recognizing everyone’s unique and essential contributions. • Diversity and inclusiveness – Valuing diverse perspectives VALUES and experiences and celebrating uniqueness of all voices; ensuring a welcoming environment for all. • Openness and transparency – Fostering an atmosphere of trust by being honest and transparent in our communication. • Integrity – Leading by example and taking responsibility for our actions. TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction / Who We Are 2 Words from Leadership 3 Our Response to COVID- 19 4 Program Highlights 1. Enhanced Language Training (ELT) 6 2. Essential Skills Upgrading (ESU) 6 3. Next-Steps Employment Centres 7 4. Newcomer Services 7 5. TDSB Welcoming Communities 8 6. On the Line (OTL) - Youth Culinary Training 8 7. Scarborough Centre for Employment Accessibility (SCEA) 9 8. Studio 500 - Hairstylist Apprenticeship & Pre-Apprenticeship 9 9. Language Instruction for Newcomers to Canada (LINC) 10 What inspires us? 11 Client/Learner Success Stories: Where are they now? 12 Employer Connections 14 Community Partners 18 Funders / Map 20 www.tdsb.on.ca/Community www.tdsb.on.ca/Community Services Services Community Community 1 1 ServicesServices INTRODUCTION / WHO WE ARE Toronto District School Board serves approximately 246,000 students in 583 schools throughout Toronto, and more than 140,000 life-long learners in our Adult and Continuing Education programs. Our mission is to enable all students to reach high levels of achievement and well-being and to acquire the knowledge, skills and values they need to become responsible, contributing members of a democratic and sustainable society. TDSB’s Community Services Unit offers employment services and career planning, skills development, apprenticeship training, language instruction, enhanced and specialized language training, settlement support, mentorship matches and much more. Programs are designed to provide tools, training and support for individuals to gain the skills and knowledge they need to be successful. A variety of individuals will benefit from these programs, including adults, youth, newcomers and people with disabilities. The programs are funded by the federal, provincial and municipal governments. SETTLEMENT EMPLOYMENT LANGUAGE SKILLS DEVELOPMENT Community Services at a Glance: Community Services’ over-arching goal is to make positive changes in people’s lives and contribute to the society by supporting everyone’s well-being. Every year, we work very hard to achieve this goal by helping people to achieve theirs whether it is integrating to a new country, learning English, find employment or obtain training. 2019/20 SNAPSHOT: 19,761 54,094 NEW CLIENTS/ VISITS AND SERVICE LEARNERS USERS 28,610 3,562 42 WORKSHOP/JOB FAIR WORKSHOP/JOB FAIRS LOCATIONS PARTICIPANTS 388 288 705 CORE STAFF COMMUNITY EMPLOYER PARTNERS CONNECTIONS 2 Community Annual Report 2019/20 Services WORDS FROM LEADERSHIP But so many of you not only survived the stresses, but also thrived. You saw this as an opportunity to create new ways to connect with participants and one another. You innovated and your clients and learners benefited. These adjustments and enhancements will continue well into the coming year and with the leadership of our staff and the support of their supervisors, program officers, coordinators and central support, we will continue to lead in our field. SEVGUL TOPKARA-SARSU GARRY GREEN MANAGER, SENIOR MANAGER, Our special thanks goes out to all of our staff for COMMUNITY SERVICES BUSINESS, COMMUNITY enduring, growing and supporting others through AND STUDENT these challenging times. They have demonstrated TRANSPORTATION SERVICES their immense commitment and dedication and the Looking Back and Leaping Forward coming year will no doubt require more of the same. Also, a special thank you to our union partners who have This past year can be categorized by stability in programs adapted with us, provided input and ideas and helped but change, adaptation and innovation in everything us transition to these new and different times. else. We have so much to look forward to this year. While we Let’s remember back to those very different days in hope for a return to “normal” with respect to the health the early part of the 2019-2020 contract year. The vast of our communities, we know that what was considered majority of service was in person, nobody gave much normal from a program perspective will never be consideration to crowding into a classroom or office the same again. We have collectively leapt forward and, almost inconceivably now, people ventured within digitally and with that, now have ways to engage our a foot of one another. Fast forward to the end of the communities, clients, learners and staff in ways previously contract year (March, 2020) and the world was gripped unimaginable. We encourage you to continue to build by a mysterious illness that shuttered programs, schools and grow in these ways and to envision programming and society. While scary and anxiety-inducing, we all that is inclusive, adaptable, accessible and equitable. received a stark reminder of how quickly life can change These are strange, and sometimes scary, times but they and the critical importance of adapting and growing at are also times filled with an abundance of opportunity all times. for engagement and collaboration. In response to COVID-19, each of our programs has In the meantime, wear your masks, stay six feet apart, stay found a unique way to adapt to the new environment safe and stay positive. We appreciate the tremendous as well as the unique needs of their participants. It has work your teams have done, the resiliency of our clients, been inspiring to watch, because this all happened learners and partners during these difficult times and without notice and while everyone was dealing with know that together we will get through this stronger. their own individual stresses and angst in their lives as they feared what would happen next, whether they’d Thank you! maintain employment and where they would find their next roll of toilet paper. Garry Green and Sevgul Topkara-Sarsu www.tdsb.on.ca/Community Services Community 3 Services OUR RESPONSE TO COVID-19 The official arrival of the pandemic in Canada in mid-March 2020 had a profound effect on everything we do. In a very short period of time, our sites were closed, staff were asked to work from home, learners and clients were informed, all program activities including language and skills development classes were redesigned so that they could be offered online. The “pivot” to remote services meant, in some cases, the cancellation of exams and other program requirements. Clients and learners are at the centre of everything we do and now is no different. Working closely with our funders and other stakeholders, we adopted new requirements and processes to ensure that clients and learners wouldn’t have to face new barriers. Essential Skills Upgrading (ESU) program, for example, the LearnIT2Teach training in the first few weeks of the developed an online assessment process for new learners lockdown and started to use various platforms such as and also connected with new learners via phone/email WhatsApp, Zoom, Big Blue Button, text and even by to ensure they are able to participate successfully in phone to reach out to learners; they were innovative the assessment process. Assessment materials were and discovered new ways to effectively teach remotely. updated to provide consistency between in-person and To manage the isolation, LINC program created chat online assessments of learners’ skills and abilities. Many groups for Instructors by CLB levels. This was a great instructors implemented ZOOM instruction for those forum for instructors to share ideas and support each who had digital capacity and utilized email/phone other during this time. learning and Canada Post services for others. Care for Newcomer Children (CNC) staff and Program While our learners with low levels of literacy skills Officers opened an Instagram account that was a great have been disproportionally impacted by this change success. Parents and their children engaged in simple in service delivery, learners with higher literacy skills interactive activities with household items and supplies report visible progress and increased satisfaction with readily available. The children enjoyed the themed their growing digital technology skills. They recognize stories and walks in nature. the value of their newly acquired skills as well as the self-efficacy they have been able to develop as they Next-Steps Employment Centre (NSEC) and SCEA were ‘forced’ to adapt to online learning. They have achieved significant milestones and set new standards expressed an increased confidence in their ability to of excellence as our program saw many changes to access future learning opportunities and an improved how we operate and deliver services online. We had outlook regarding their employability skills. the opportunity to jump into action and develop an online task team to create over 30 online workshops and Language Instruction for Newcomers to Canada resources to support our clients. We have had virtual (LINC) program implemented changes to the language job fairs, intakes, assessments and job search support. instruction to provide language lessons online to many This was only possible with a core team of selflessly English language learners.