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As the research and evaluation partner for CANN E-Link, SRDC found that proactive outreach to newcomers by settlement providers increases their usage of settlement services among newcomers by 12.7 percentage points in the first six months of settling in Canada. E-Link clients are 14 percentage points more likely to get a referral to other settlement services, 4.3 percentage points less likely to not know where to find the settlement services they needed, and 7.5 percentage points more likely to know where to get employment services. E-Link increases the proportion of newcomers with a sense of hope about the future by 5.9 percentage points − suggesting that newcomers settled and integrated better in their first six months in Canada.

CANN E-Link’s proactive outreach to newcomers at the right time increases newcomers’ access to settlement supports and services. Applying behavioural insights to identify the best opportunities to engage and support newcomers along their settlement journey is the basis of E-Link’s success.

Discover more in the full Final Evaluation Report.

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• A Financial Incentive to Encourage Employment Among Repeat Users of Employment Insurance
• Employment Insurance and Family Response to Unemployment: Canadian Evidence from the SLID
• Employment Insurance And Geographic Mobility: Evidence From The SLID
• Essays on the Repeat Use of Unemployment Insurance
• Implementing ESP: A Test of a re-Employment Incentive
• Seasonal Employment and Reliance on Employment Insurance: Evidence from the SLID
• Testing a re-Employment Incentive for Displaced Workers
• The Dynamics of Reliance on EI Benefits: Evidence from the SLID
• The Frequent Use of Unemployment Insurance in Canada
• The Impact of the Allowable Earnings Provision on EI Dependency
• Understanding Employment Insurance Claim Patterns: Final Report Of ESP
• Who Benefits from Unemployment Insurance in Canada: Regions, Industries, or Individual Firms?

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The goal of AVID is to support “middle achieving” students with a B to C average who are motivated to pursue PSE. It encourages students to acquire skills that promote academic success (such as good work habits and organizational skills) and that enable them to cope with the demands of the more rigorous courses that are often pre-requisites for entry to post-secondary education. The program places students in these advanced academic courses and in an AVID elective class focused on writing, inquiry, collaboration, organization and study skills and includes regular tutorials with older students. AVID programs are coordinated by the non-profit AVID Center in San Diego, which supports and certifies AVID sites worldwide. The program was established in 1980, and by 2004 was operating in 1,800 schools in the United States and one school district in Canada (Chilliwack, B.C.). The project has allowed the program to expand to an additional 18 school sites in B.C.

Methodology

The Social Research and Demonstration Corporation (SRDC) is conducting the evaluation of the BC AVID pilot project as a social experiment. Grade 8 student volunteers were randomly assigned to one of up to three experimental groups: a program group that receives the program, a comparison group or a waitlist group. Because program and comparison groups are similar in all other respects, differences in students’ experiences over time can be attributed to the impact of the program. A waitlist group was created – where sample numbers were sufficient – to enable any emerging vacancies in the class to be filled.

The BC AVID pilot project involves over 1,500 students in 18 schools. At 14 schools, students were recruited and randomly assigned to the experimental groups. Four schools were included as case study sites to help identify the challenges of implementing AVID at rural and remote schools. In all, roughly 900 students were assigned to receive AVID, 170 were placed on a waitlist for the program, and 450 were allocated to the comparison group.

The primary impact of interest is students’ enrolment in PSE and completion of their first year of studies. However, the project is also interested in determining the impact of AVID on high school course selection, attendance, and graduation as well as PSE program selection, program financing, student persistence, and program completion. In addition, BC AVID includes an implementation evaluation and a cost-benefit analysis.

Status

Two cohorts of students were recruited for BC AVID, the first in early 2005 and the second in 2006, when students were in Grade 8. Schools began delivery of the AVID program in Grade 9 (starting September 2005). The second cohort of students began Grade 9 AVID a year later. This means it will be possible to observe the first cohort’s PSE enrolment in 2010, and the second in 2011. In November 2008, SRDC published its first report on the project entitled, BC AVID Pilot Project: Early Implementation Report. This report documented the design and early implementation of the project. The interim impacts report was published in November 2010, and the final report was published in August 2014.

Funding

The BC AVID pilot project was funded by the Canada Millennium Scholarship Foundation.

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Can low-income adults be encouraged to save money in order to attend education or training or start a new business? This question was at the heart of learn$ave, a demonstration project that tested Individual Development Accounts. IDAs are matched-savings plans that encourage low-income individuals to accumulate productive assets for purposes of improving themselves.

In learn$ave, the project contributed $3 in matched credits for every $1 deposited in a learn$ave account. Participants had up to three years to save a maximum of $1,500. With the matching contribution, therefore, the total amount available to the participant could be as high as $6,000. Like other IDA programs, learn$ave also provided assistance to participants in the form of financial management training and a case management component. Earned credits had to be used up by month 48.

The allowable uses for the matched funds were limited to training, education, and small business start-up.

Methodology

A total of 4,827 participants enrolled in learn$ave, which operated in 10 sites across Canada. The Social Research and Demonstration Corporation (SRDC) and Social and Enterprise Development Innovations (SEDI) jointly conducted the project. SEDI was responsible for the implementation and delivery of the project in partnership with a network of non-profit agencies. Local financial institutions worked with the community agencies to provide deposit account services to learn$ave participants.

Throughout the project, launched in 2001, SRDC oversaw the research and evaluation process to determine how well learn$ave was implemented and worked, and what impacts it had. SRDC evaluated the project by conducting randomized trials in Vancouver, Toronto, and Halifax. Participants were randomly assigned to program and control groups, and the two groups were compared on a series of outcomes. Specifically, researchers looked at whether participants in learn$ave

increased budgeting and financial goal setting, increased the amount saved and overall new worth within the saving period, increased their participation in adult learning and small business start-up, and improved their employment and earnings prospects.

Other research included a case study on service delivery in the three cities mentioned above and at seven other sites across Canada – Calgary, Winnipeg, Grey-Bruce counties (Ontario), Kitchener-Waterloo, Montréal, Fredericton, and Annapolis-Digby (Nova Scotia). A cost-effectiveness analysis was also conducted to determine if a program like learn$ave is economically viable for implementation on a larger scale.

Status

The project ended with the release of the final research report in November 2010. The report confirmed that matched savings can encourage low-income adults to save for and enrol in post-secondary education and training. However, the report showed that this can be a costly way of promoting adult learning and provided suggestions for ways to reduce costs. It also found that windfall gains realized by participants who would have enrolled in adult learning without learn$ave reduced the program’s cost-effectiveness, though this is a problem that exists but is unmeasured in alternative financial assistance models.

In August 2005, SRDC published Design and Implementation of a Program to Help the Poor Save, the second report on the learn$ave project, which documented in detail the implementation of learn$ave and presented lessons learned. In its January 2008 report, Learning to Save, Saving to Learn: Early Impacts of the learn$ave Individual Development Accounts Project, SRDC clearly showed that low-income adults can save, mainly by re-arranging their asset portfolio. In the March 2009 report, Learning to Save, Saving to Learn: Intermediate Impacts of the learn$ave Individual Development Accounts Project, the results indicated that the matched saving credits encouraged adult learning among participants, mainly in post-secondary education programs.

Funding
learn$ave was funded by Human Resources and Skills Development Canada.

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