Well ahead of the so­cial me­dia launch this Jan­u­ary, Al­ta’s web-based lit­er­a­cy pro­gramme Al­ta On­line has been high­ly sought af­ter. Thanks to com­mit­ted part­ners like the Sco­tia­bank Foun­da­tion, com­mu­ni­ties around Trinidad and To­ba­go are now able to make the dream of ac­cess to on­line lit­er­a­cy in­struc­tion a re­al­i­ty.

Al­ta On­line is an in­ter­ac­tive, on­line ver­sion of the lit­er­a­cy pro­gramme used in Al­ta’s free com­mu­ni­ty class­es (age 16+) and the Youth Lit Pro­gramme (be­low age 16).

It brings the class­room pro­gramme to a vir­tu­al space, tak­ing stu­dents through the course of in­struc­tion via a se­ries of ac­tiv­i­ties to im­prove read­ing and spelling.

Al­ta thanks the Sco­tia­bank Foun­da­tion for pro­vid­ing spon­sor­ship of Al­ta On­line for 25 stu­dents from East Port-of-Spain.

This ini­tia­tive is in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the East Port-of-Spain De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny, which has tapped in­to its net­work of com­mu­ni­ty schools to match stu­dents in need of lit­er­a­cy in­ter­ven­tion with the pro­gramme.

Five Al­ta On­line men­tors have been sourced from with­in the East Port-of-Spain De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny and pro­vid­ed with train­ing from Al­ta to pro­vide sup­port to stu­dents as they em­bark on their lit­er­a­cy jour­ney.

The men­tors will fa­cil­i­tate stu­dents with ini­tial sign up and act as a point of con­tact for any queries they may have. The role al­so ex­tends to reg­u­lar fol­low-up, en­sur­ing that stu­dents are ac­tive­ly en­gaged with Al­ta On­line.

Ms Gayle Pa­zos, Se­nior Vice Pres­i­dent & Head of Caribbean South & East at Sco­tia­bank not­ed: “We recog­nise that even with the ac­ti­va­tion of re­mote learn­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties, more de­pen­dent learn­ers and those with spe­cialised learn­ing re­quire­ments need ad­di­tion­al sup­port. Lit­er­a­cy ini­tia­tives such as this play a vi­tal part in sup­port­ing re­cov­ery from the pan­dem­ic and en­sur­ing that no one is left be­hind.

“They al­so help pro­vide the nec­es­sary gate­way to lat­er aca­d­e­m­ic suc­cess and re­silience.”

Stu­dents will first ac­cess the AL­TA On­line as­sess­ment tool. Com­ing out of the as­sess­ment, those in need of AL­TA Lev­el 1 in­struc­tion will be­gin us­ing Book 1 of the pro­gramme. Up­on suc­cess­ful com­ple­tion of the lev­el, stu­dents are award­ed an e-cer­tifi­cate.

Al­ta’s com­mu­ni­ty im­ple­men­ta­tion mod­el con­tin­ues to bring spon­sors and com­mu­ni­ties to­geth­er to im­pact lives through Al­ta On­line.

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