A new three-year Community District Literacy Plan for the Boundary began to take shape on April 19 at gallery 2 in Grand Forks.
There were 34 people from across the Boundary signed in for the day-long event. They represented partners, interest groups and citizens of all ages. Significantly, two high school students attended – one from BCSS and the other from GFSS. “They were major contributors to the process,” said Community Literacy Co-ordinator Sheila Dobie.
Groups worked during the morning to identify future trends, issues, needs and opportunities. Following lunch, groups were formed around specific demographic areas of interest – such as youth, seniors, adult and school age – each identifying three literacy-related actions or initiatives.
After each of these groups reported out, everyone was invited to vote for their favourite five initiatives.
“The next step is to filter through and come up with some key themes and directions so we can use those as our focus areas for the next three years for our literacy programming,” said Dobie.
Once she has a draft plan ready to go she will send it out to each of the participants for review and comment. She plans to have the report done by the first part of June.
Joining the Boundary residents for the day was Margaret Sutherland, program manager with Decoda Literacy Solutions – the provincial non-profit literacy organization that works with 102 literacy task groups such as the one that gathered in Grand Forks.
“We do advocacy work, training, provide support such as a lending library to literacy groups and organizations across the province,” explained Sutherland.
Decoda was close to losing a major portion of their funding for the coming year but after an outcry from residents across the province the government restored the money.
Sutherland explained that literacy co-ordination outreach funding, which is used for positions such as Dobie’s here in the Boundary was cut in half.
“It was funded at $2.5 million across the province for a number of years,” she said. “Last year it was cut to $1.5 million but Decoda topped it up with reserves that had come from the amalgamation of two older organizations – Literacy BC and the Literacy Now arm of Legacy 2010. This year the cut was maintained and we didn’t have any more reserves. So it was really wonderful that the people across the province raised their voices and called, wrote, emailed and we got that $1 million reinstated.”
Dobie said that so many people contacted Victoria to protest the cuts that the government had to hire extra employees to respond to them all.
“Lots of people across the province engaged in the campaign to get that funding reinstated,” agreed Sutherland.
She stressed the importance of collaborative partnerships. “The more that we get together and work together the better work we can do and the more funds we can leverage to do that work. So it’s actually a pretty simple solution, though it takes a lot of work.”