A Recruitment campaign on behalf of the Learning and Skills Council.

Q. How do you find people who can teach people with basic skills problems?

A. The Learning and Skills Council presented us with a problem. The brief was to devise a campaign to attract basic skills tutors. But who are they? Where do we begin to look? And when we find them, what will ring their bells?

We spent a month talking with people who were already working as basic skills tutors. Our aim was to find out all about them - what makes them do what they do? Why do they enjoy doing it?

We discovered that many were former teachers who wanted a more flexible life style. Others were older people, many with grown up children. Of course, all parents are basic skills tutors in their own way.

So we tailored our search to these groups. We created a 'community networking' campaign - contacting organisations such as reading groups, libraries, history societies, University of the Third Age, book clubs, The Women's Institute, etc. We then recruited these groups to distribute our marketing materials, which invited interested people to attend live group meetings.

Result?

We used our group meetings (all over-subscribed) as a platform to evangelise about the benefits of helping people with basic skills problems – benefits not only the learner, but also the tutor. The results were amazing - 100% attendance, and LSC targets for getting people signed up to train as basic skills tutors exceeded by 15%.