In this episode Christina Fowler, Executive Director, talks about the impact of the Saint John Learning Exchange at a systems and individual  level. Christina shares with us how learning, knowledge and the accreditation that comes with that the Saint John Learning Exchange is able to lift people out of poverty. 



We’ve been able to proudly say, after the five year study that, for every dollar spent in The Learning Exchange, there’s an $8 return to our funders. It’s a very unique opportunity to be able to quantify socially, because we know and we feel it in our hearts every day with the learners and we see it and we have so many good news stories, but we’re also actually able to say to the taxpayers of New Brunswick, your money is well spent in this wraparound organization, and the impact is felt not only with our learners but it’s felt throughout the generations.Christina Fowler, Executive Director







Transcript of Interview with Christina Fowler



Jenelle:Today, we have with us Christina Feller, Executive Director of The St. John Learning Exchange and you can learn more about The Learning Exchange at stile.org. Christina, I’ve been following your career and The Learning Exchange for probably over a decade now, and I’d say it’s quite unique for many reasons, but the most interesting has been the fact that The Learning Exchange has built their own social enterprises, and in fact you have, I think, four businesses that are supporting your mission and provide the organization with sustainability. Can you tell us a little bit about the organization, its mission, and your role within it?



Christina Fowler:I’d be happy to. I’m the Executive Director of The Learning Exchange and I’ve been…I guess, almost 16 years I’ve been with the organization and it’s been an amazing journey and experience. I started out working for government and I feel like I spent more time in government trying to kind of get around the policies and trying to support the learner. Moving into the nonprofit sector, I was able to put my talents to work better, because in our sector, it’s kind of make your own destiny. It’s a freedom seeking type of job and you put your innovation hat on and you try to lead from the ground up.



Christina Fowler:The Learning Exchange is over 35 years old, and when we started quite a number of years ago, it was a very traditional organization, very focused on literacy and reading and GED and those types of traditional things, and we’ve expanded and grown a lot over the years. We’ve doubled our staff, we’ve created amazing businesses and it’s just been really thinking and listening to the learners and trying to figure out what works best for them in a changing market and a changing economy, and knowing that we need to provide a multitude of services to individuals, a menu really, of services, because people are unique and you have to try to figure out what works best. And so, we moved our business lines to more workplace essential skills or skills based learning. We moved it almost into what we call project based learning, and I’m so very proud of the projects that we do, and we do things like sewing projects and we have a pantry that provides food to learners, because food security is a big issue.



Christina Fowler:We have a hydroponic greenhouse on the roof of the beautiful building that we’re in, and we really try to figure out how to do adult learning in a very different way, so that the learners feel a part of it, so that they lead things and they’re able to test their skills and one of our main focuses has been on soft skills training. That’s one of our lines of business,