European Social Fund in England

Community champions

The project will be delivered through the Crescent Partnership. Each partner college will have full responsibility for the delivery of their part of the project. The whole bid will be managed and co-ordinated by the Crescent Group Project Manager who will work with an operations group, a Project Manager/ administrator and an Outreach Co-ordinator from each college. This group will be responsible for examining and developing quality systems throughout the project and providing regular management information and evaluation reports. The Crescent Project Management will be based Hopwood Hall College (the accountable body for the project) and will report directly to the Steering Group of the Crescent Group of Principals and the LSC.

A networking group will be established to ensure Outreach Co-ordinators, Community Learning Champions and Basic Skills tutors do not feel isolated and have opportunities to develop/share resources; a Crescent and Manchester Consortium group will meet as a Partnership Project Development Network. This will act as a focus group for the whole project and will produce monthly newsletter as well producing articles for a project web-site.

The Partnership would identify outreach co-ordinators to manage the delivery of the project within the crescent deprived wards within Greater Manchester. These co-ordinators would have Basic Skills/ESOL qualifications and background and also experience of managing projects within deprived communities.

Each Partner would seek to identify, recruit and train 12 Basic Skills Learning Champions. These Champions would be drawn into the project from local partnerships organisations.

The group of Learning Champions would be managed and trained by a local outreach co-ordinator. This group would need to develop their literacy or numeracy skills to Level 2 and they would then be supported where necessary to take Level 2 qualifications in literacy and numeracy. This training would then include completing the Level 2 City and Gulids 9295 Certificate (or equivalent) in Learning Support. The training programme will also involve training and support in engaging and meeting the needs of hard to reach learners. The project will offer Champions an allowance which falls within the benefit agency limits. It is envisaged that a number of the Champions would move on to paid employment.

Once trained and still under the close supervision of the outreach co-ordinator, Champions would then work within their local communities and would engage groups of learners through an initial range of interesting and innovative tasters and/or short courses all incorporating elements of literacy and numeracy. Each Champion would also work with and be supported by a Crescent college Basic Skills tutors who would map the courses to the core curriculum, tutors would work across each Crescent college area. Learning groups would then be established at a range of venues located in the priority wards, across the life of the project.

It is expected that there will be a minimum of 10 learners in each group. The focus of the group would be linking basic skills and language to a relevant curriculum area. All community learning groups will be treated individually. The Crescent group would seek to deliver a selection of short courses which would be negotiated with group leaders within each area to ensure local needs are met.

Examples of courses are listed below:

• Introduction to work skills
• Introduction to Child Care and Parenting
• Healthy Life Styles
• Introduction to Health and Social Care
• Sports Leadership courses
• Citizenship today
• Information Technology-getting started
• Managing Your Money

It is envisaged that basic skills tutors would work with curriculum staff to deliver these courses and that workshops in literacy, numeracy or language would be delivered as part of the programme.

As learners join the programme they will receive an:

• Interview
• Assessment
• Advice and guidance
• Individual Learning Plan

After 6 weeks all learners will take a diagnostic assessment that will inform the learner of their abilities and be used to encourage students to register for the national certificates in literacy and numeracy or other entry level qualifications.

Setting targets and recording progress at each review session will measure the distance travelled by each learner. It is expected that 80% of learners engaged would achieve a basic skills or ESOL qualification as part of their programme.

At the end of the project a celebration of learning will be organised. This will be an opportunity to show off projects by presentation, display and video. This event will also help to inform the evaluation process, e. g. positive outcomes, failures, reasons for failures, actions to be taken to ensure Community learning Champions continue in their areas.