Can 26 letters open more doors to work and independence in Mons-Borinage?

Lire et Écrire Centre Mons-Borinage will unveil a free exhibition of 26 learner-made panels at Parc Gilson in La Louvière on 8 September, from 10:00 to 16:00, to mark International Literacy Day. The organisation says each letter in “The Alphabet of Changed Lives” represents a word chosen to describe what learning to read and write can make possible, from greater confidence to fuller participation in society. The display is due to proceed as a one-day public event; organisers have not published attendance targets or a plan for showing it elsewhere.

The scale is modest, but the subject reaches well beyond a park exhibition. Reading a payslip, following safety instructions, completing an online application or understanding a letter from a bank, landlord or public authority are basic requirements of economic life. For adults who struggle with written information, these ordinary transactions can become barriers to taking a job, claiming an entitlement or comparing household costs. Literacy is therefore not simply an educational outcome. It affects employability, bargaining power and the ability to deal independently with institutions.

The exhibition was constructed by learners and connects several activities run by Lire et Écrire, including its literacy work, a reuse initiative known as a “donnerie” and the creative Alphalaine workshop, according to the organisation’s event notice. By asking participants to select and interpret the words themselves, the project presents them as authors of the public message rather than anonymous recipients of assistance. That distinction matters in a field where stigma can discourage adults from disclosing difficulties or seeking training.

The economic evidence supports the broader concern, although Belgium does not produce a simple, annually updated count of adults who cannot read or write sufficiently for everyday life. Statbel’s 2022 Adult Education Survey found that only 11.8% of adults with a low level of education participated in non-formal training, compared with 27.6% among those with medium qualifications and 54.5% among the highly educated. The comparison points to a persistent training gap: people with the weakest educational starting point are also the least likely to benefit from further learning.

That gap is particularly relevant around Mons and La Louvière. Le Forem reported that Hainaut Centre had 31,280 registered jobseekers at the end of May 2025 and that 46%, or 14,398 people, did not hold the upper-secondary CESS certificate. Lack of a CESS is not the same as low literacy, and the figures must not be conflated. They nevertheless show the size of the local population for whom accessible basic-skills and vocational pathways may be economically important. In the same labour-market area, employers still report vacancies in fields such as cleaning, logistics and construction, illustrating that unemployment and recruitment difficulty can coexist when skills, mobility, schedules and job requirements do not align.

Le Forem’s own analysis has identified weak digital skills as more common among people with fewer qualifications, the over-50s, long-term jobseekers and residents of Hainaut and Liège. It also noted that using digital tools usually requires command of written language. This creates a compounding disadvantage: a person may struggle not only with a paper form but also with the account creation, instructions and written exchanges required by an online-only process. For households, that can mean relying on relatives or intermediaries to manage benefits, energy contracts, banking or healthcare administration. For employers, it can narrow the recruitment pool and require more attention to plain-language instructions, onboarding and safety communication.

Adult literacy policy in French-speaking Belgium is spread across several institutions rather than governed by one unified system. The Walloon government says it supports provision through socio-professional integration, social action and social-cohesion budgets, including subsidies for Centres d’insertion socioprofessionnelle and a partnership with Lire et Écrire. Wallonia, the French Community and Brussels’ French Community Commission established a permanent steering committee under cooperation agreements first concluded in 2005 and renewed in 2023. Its role includes mapping demand, training provision and participant profiles, then advising the responsible governments.

This structure reflects the breadth of the issue, but it can also make responsibility and financing harder for the public to follow. Literacy organisations argue that stable, low-threshold provision is necessary because learners may need time, trust and individual support before moving into vocational training or employment. Public authorities and employment services, meanwhile, must distribute limited budgets across literacy, language learning, digital inclusion and job-specific programmes while demonstrating measurable results. These are not mutually exclusive positions, but short funding cycles or narrow job-placement indicators can undervalue progress such as reading official correspondence independently or acquiring the confidence to enter further training.

The wider European labour market is raising the stakes. Recruitment and public administration increasingly rely on digital platforms, while jobs once described as low-skilled commonly involve written safety procedures, handheld devices, scheduling applications or electronic stock systems. Belgium’s challenge is consequently not just to offer advanced reskilling for workers affected by automation. It is also to ensure that people who need foundational reading, writing and digital skills can reach the first rung of that ladder.

For the Mons-Borinage economy, the practical question is whether cultural visibility can be converted into durable access. The exhibition may help employers, social workers and residents recognise literacy difficulties without reducing learners to a deficit. The more consequential work comes afterwards: detecting needs discreetly, referring people to suitable courses, coordinating literacy with vocational instruction and retaining non-digital routes to essential services while training is under way.

Visitors can see the 26 panels at Parc Gilson on Tuesday. After that, the points to watch are whether organisers publish attendance or learner feedback, whether the exhibition travels to other municipalities, and how Wallonia’s literacy partnerships fare in future budget decisions. No evidence published before the event establishes that the exhibition itself will increase enrolment or employment. Its immediate, verifiable achievement is narrower but still useful: it brings an often-hidden economic barrier into public view through the words of people confronting it.