Adult Community Education

The New Zealand Tertiary Education Strategy 2010-2015 sets out the Government's vision for Tertiary Education. The priorities established in that document are reflected in our work in our region to enable our people to make a valuable contribution to our future.

Adult and Community Education has three priorities:

To engage learners who have not been well served by education in the past
To improve literacy, language and numeracy skills for individuals and whanau
To contribute to the overall cohesiveness of the community

WestREAP's Adult Community Education (ACE) role is to assess the needs emerging through the overall development of our part of the West Coast. How our people contribute to our industries, our work, where do we study and train? We meet those needs by developing programmes and activities that will address the educational and social needs of adults in our communities so that more are able to be a part of a sustainable future on the Coast.

It's all about participation - giving people the skills to get involved and take an active part in the future of our region. Needs assessment is ongoing, it happens in a variety of contexts, personal contact, surveys, evaluations of programmes, community forums and our interaction with our education and social service partners throughout the region.

WestREAP's core ACE role is funded by the Tertiary Education Commission and offers education in the community to all individual adults and families in a variety of ways:

Foundation Learning includes: Employment and Training mentoring services, Adult Language Literacy and Numeracy support porgrammes, Information Technology Training and Newcomers Support services.

Collaborative Communities: West Coast ACE Network, Education West Coast and the Tertiary Providers Network, ACE Aotearoa and REAP Aotearoa NZ are all organisations that WestREAP belongs to, we learn from and contribute to successful professional networks and together we ensure quality through working toward excellence. Our Collaborative work supports professional development of our community service groups and regular forum activities.

The current ACE team are;

Cheryl Jackson	ACE Co-Ordinator
Karen Greenslade	Early Literacy Project Supervisor Whakamana Te Whanau: Empowering Family Learning
Mark Falloon	ICT Training Facilitator
Dianne Ferguson	Learner Advocate
Maria Gibbs	Employment Programme Facilitator
Lesley Webb	Adult Literacy Practitioner
Jeannie Bryson	ICT Training Facilitator (CiH Buller)
Lilian Mellsop-Melssen	Newcomers Network Facilitator

To contact any of these staff or to enquire more about Adult Community Education (click here)