Here are excerpts from our September '97 newsletter.

Two of our newest volunteers, Claire Sanders and Janine Kroy, hard at work in the library.

Welcome back!

Welcome back to a new year with Prospects! We hope you all had an enjoyable summer and that you feel rested and ready to continue with your learning. As you know, the staff took shorter holidays this year. We were back in the office on July 21 and we suffered through a few very hot days. But we have been able to do lots of planning for the fall and we are looking forward to a great year.

There have been one or two changes at Prospects since the last newsletter. As most of you know, Susan Devins left her position as student coordinator in June. Susan is working on a project for the Alberta Association for Adult Literacy and is also doing some workplace literacy. Susan will be missed by everyone at Prospects, and we all wish her well in her new work.

Anne Force will take on the role of student coordinator. As well, she will continue to coordinate some of the family literacy programs. We are also pleased to welcome Diane Woelfle who will coordinate the Books for Babies project. She has been working on this project through the summer and will organize a launch of the project in October, with our project partners the Junior League of Edmonton.

As usual, we are starting September in a big way by celebrating International Literacy Day two days early on September 6th. As in the past two years some local bookstores will donate 10% of proceeds to our programs. You will find more information about this inside. Please head down to the bookstores that day. You will support our programs by purchasing your books on September 6th.

Maureen Sanders

 

A Conference for All

This fall the Alberta Association for Adult Literacy and the Literacy Coordinators of Alberta are holding the Celebrating Literacy conference in Edmonton. The dates are Thursday, October 23rd to Saturday October 25th. Students and tutors are invited, as well as literacy program staff. There are bursaries available for students to attend, as well as sessions of interest to them. We may also be able to provide support for up to four tutors to attend. It would be great if some tutor/student pairs would go together, but you can also go as an individual or with other students or tutors.

We have the conference guide and information for applying for bursaries in the office. This is a great opportunity to meet others from literacy programs, learn some new things and have fun. And it's right here in Edmonton.

Collaboration Project

The five local literacy programs have been meeting for the past six months to talk about how we can work together to improve literacy programs for students and tutors.

We held a series of focus groups in June with students, tutors and board members from each of the programs attending. Our thanks to: Donna-Lynn Moos, Soon Nam Sabulka, Troy Stel, Candice Smuda, Joe Soares, Gordon McLeod, Erik DeRegt, Linda Mattern, Lorelei Campbell, Diana Seemann and Becky Shandling who represented Prospects at these meetings.

We have now decided on four goals that all of the programs will work on together. These are:

• A shared brochure about literacy
• A shared web site on the Internet
• A major event focused on International Literacy Day in 1998
• A study of what we each do in the area of assessment to see if there are some ways we can work together.

The five programs involved are:
Prospects, PALS (Project Adult Literacy Society), The Learning Centre in the Boyle Street Co-op, the PLUS program at the John Howard Society and the YMCA literacy program.

We hope that by working together more closely, we will be able to improve literacy program services in the city and raise greater awareness about literacy issues.

We're in the News!

Maureen is interviewed by Sianna Collins on the U of A campus

You may have heard Prospects' name mentioned in the media lately. Maureen did an interview with Videotron about Prospects programs and about the bookstore event on September 6th. This ran during the first week of September a couple of times a day on a program called "Heading Back". Also, Board member Lynda Tutty recently did an interview with Power 92. Rhymes that Bind sessions were run at the Junior League's C & E Station during the Fringe Festival and Lynda spoke about our programs at this event.

A Meeting with the Minister

In the spring, the Prospects Board wrote to the new Minister of Advanced Education and Career Development, Mr. Clint Dunford. They told him about the Prospects programs and expressed concerns about the funding cutbacks of the past few years.

We received a very nice letter back from Mr. Dunford and he invited us to meet with him in September. We hope to send a small group representing staff, board, tutors and students. We are delighted to have this chance to speak on behalf of Prospects and to advocate for literacy programs in general.

Welcome New Board Members

Welcome to Jennifer Kaufman-Shaw and Christine Mowat who were elected to our Board of Directors at the Annual General Meeting in June. They will attend Board orientation and their first Board meeting in mid September.

And our thanks to James Heelan and Colin Le Rougetel who just completed their terms on the Board. We very much appreciate their contributions to our organization.