I have been in the role of learning organiser for UNISON in the North West for 5 months‎. The main objectives are to recruit and develop union learning reps in our branches and to help our reps organise learning opportunities for members, through which we can meet our numeracy, literacy, IT and equal opportunities targets set by the Union Learning Fund – and make a genuine difference to the lives of members, families and communities.

At present, we have recruited and trained 8 new learning reps, with a further 9 enrolled for training in February. We also have many new contacts who we hope will take up the ULR role and study the stage 1 course. We are also developing our existing ULRs by offering ‎dyslexia awareness training to equip them with the skills to make workplaces more dyslexia friendly and accessible and to break down the myths and prejudices around dyslexia.

The majority of our ULRs are women and a good majority of members who attend our courses and training are women, with a good mix of young and older people. This diversity is of significant benefit to the wider trade union movement.

We have a growing list of courses and events our members can attend for example deaf awareness, mindfulness, pre-retirement seminar, using the internet, dementia awareness, “Your Skills Your Future” and “Women's Lives”, and further courses are available for branches to run. We support initiatives ‎like Reading Ahead, which has been very successful in Blackpool Health, Merseytravel, Wirral and Manchester in engaging people in reading.

We also support the great collaborative work between our UNISON branches and their employers‎, notably at Merseytravel, Blackpool Health and Bury Council.

Our next steps include developing self-sustaining learning rep committees ‎in more of our branches, approaching employers to pursue new learning agreements, supporting new numeracy and literacy initiatives, working with apprentices and supporting apprenticeship programmes, continuing to recruit, train and develop new learning reps, and continuing to offer quality member learning opportunities.