Thank you, Lily.
It's a complete pleasure to be here to present our program to you. Thank you so much for giving us the chance.
Our programs, Stepping Stones and computer-enhanced ESL literacy, is for students with very low literacy. I know there are lots of LINC classes around that are based on the PBLA system. We are targeting students who have limited formal schooling; they have no education from back home. I have students who don't even know how to grab a pen and then how to write. These students are homebound and isolated. They could be seniors or mothers with children who haven't gone out to study for a long time. We are helping those individuals.
What is unique about our program is that we welcome everyone. We definitely focus on their ESL benchmark, but we do not limit them such that if they don't have certain marks, they cannot get into the class. It's open to them. They can come and they can learn more and then get a chance to go into a LINC class. We've had lots of students who graduated from our program and then eventually went to LINC classes to pursue their studies. That's one of the biggest successes of our program.
I also want to say that we have trained bilingual facilitators. For example, in the Chinese community, we have Chinese bilingual teachers helping these students. There are many reasons behind that. First of all, these students are isolated. They don't know how to get out of their homes, and they don't know how to go and follow a formal PBLA system. Once they come into the class and they see that the teacher is from their own culture and the teacher welcomes them with their own culture, then they feel more comfortable getting connected to the teacher and then to the learning.
The bilingual facilitator helps a lot in class. Ninety-five per cent of the class happens in English, but only 5% if a student is stuck. If they do not understand the material, we will help them in their own language. Especially when we do our needs assessment or pre- and post-evaluations, we definitely need help to make sure that the students are giving us the correct answer, so we approach them with their own language.
Right now the Stepping Stone program is happening in the Afghan and Chinese communities. We have bilingual facilitators. In the Chinese community, we have four terms, 45 hours every term, or 180 hours per year, and then in the Afghan community we have three terms, 30 hours every term, or 90 hours per year. We mostly target PB or CLB or lower students to make sure they get a chance to pursue their education.
Computer-enhanced literacy is for everyone. It's a multicultural program. Everyone is welcome to attend that program. When we are talking about computer-enhanced literacy, I'm not saying here that we're teaching these students the details of the computer. We are introducing technology to them. We all know how important technology is becoming now, so we introduce them to using an iPad, how to do banking online and so on.