Literacy in The Columbia Basin

There are significant literacy and basic skills issues in all communities across the Columbia Basin. Young people continue to drop out of school. Many are graduating without sufficient basic reading and writing skills. Families are seeking help in supporting their children. The health, vibrancy, and quality of local communities and families are deeply affected.

Current literacy programs are insufficient and poorly funded. Too much time has to be spent chasing short-term project funding, rather than building effective and quality programs and networks.

The International Adult Literacy Survey (1995) concluded that approximately 44% of adults in British Columbia have difficulty reading and writing on a daily functional basis. In economies that are shifting to higher skill jobs and new technologies, these results are devastating.

Many of the communities across the Columbia Basin are undergoing significant change, as traditional resource-based economies decline, families and young people move away seeking brighter employment opportunities, older people move to the Basin seeking different lifestyles, and local populations age. Local communities are beginning to initiate community visioning and community-economic development processes in response. Regionally, organizations like the Columbia Basin Trust are providing leadership to community socio-economic development and change efforts.

It is essential that literacy and learning issues become an integral part of this widening community change movement. Education levels, formal and informal, have a direct impact on the socio-economic health of communities. Learning communities represent one potential dynamic vision for a new future.

During a keynote address at the "Family Literacy: Key to a Healthy Future" Provincial Conference and Western Symposium held in Saskatoon in June 1998, Dr. Fraser Mustard emphasized the fact that a family's wealth or poverty is not the only factor that determines whether or not children are at risk.  "This means that in every socioeconomic class, a portion of the population is affected because they have not had sufficient stimulation.  In our society, because of its size, there are actually more children in the middle class in difficulty than in the poverty group." Dr. Mustard concluded that we need to have universal programs available for all families.  (The Effect of Economic Change on Society's Children and Human Development, Dr. Fraser Mustard, keynote address, Family Literacy: Key to a Healthy Future Provincial Conference and Western Symposium, June 4-6, 1998, Saskatoon, SK.)

The function of the Columbia Basin Alliance For Literacy is to provide Basin-wide leadership and support to local community action efforts and to partner with other regional bodies such as the Columbia Basin Trust.

History of CBAL

Since 1996 and starting with 5 communities, Community Literacy Advisory Committees have been formed or are currently forming in each of 17 major communities in the Columbia Basin to plan for, initiate, and support family literacy programs. Together, these communities have collaborated in seeking funding to ensure that each community has an equal opportunity to work towards being a learning community, to build family literacy programs and resources, and, in sharing resources, to build more effective programs.

Effective family literacy programs (for example, Books For Babies, Parent-Child Mother Goose, Family Night Out, Families In Motion and Parents Reading, Children Succeeding) are now well underway in all of the larger communities and in a number of smaller satellite communities. Many local partnerships have been established.

The Columbia Basin Alliance for Literacy (CBAL) has grown out of the more informal networking of the past decade and was given formal birth in 1999 at a meeting of the local and regional literacy coordinators. In September, 2000, the Alliance held its first highly successful conference, bringing people together from across the Columbia Basin to look at community development approaches for literacy, long term financial sustainability issues, and the future of the Alliance. CBAL was formally incorporated in August, 2001.

Administrative Structure:

Each of the communities that make up the Alliance has a Community Literacy Advisory Committee, which is open to any interested individuals.  Each committee has a paid Coordinator, who facilitates the committee and manages the programs and projects which arise from its work.

Grounding Principles:

The work of the Alliance is based on the following principles:

1. Providing the opportunities for all community members to be included in literacy programs.
2. Being proactively responsive to local needs across the Columbia Basin.
3. Networking and cooperating with interested individuals, groups, programs, organizations, and businesses.
4. Fostering and building partnerships that support literacy and life long learning.
5. Maintaining a participatory and democratic organizational structure.
6. Increasing the profile of literacy and life long learning across the Columbia Basin through a unified voice.
7. Incorporating an inclusive understanding of literacy: family literacy, adult literacy, and workplace literacy.
8. Seeing literacy as part of community capacity building, building on community strengths and programs without duplicating services.
9. Maintaining a learner focused approach in the planning, delivering, and evaluating of programs.

Functions:

The functions of CBAL include:

• supporting the work of local Community Literacy Advisory Committees and their  coordinators.
• finding and distributing funding for local community literacy and life long learning       programs.
• acting as the employer for local literacy coordinators and program staff..
• helping community literacy advisory committees to evolve linking smaller communities to larger communities.
• providing an overall administrative structure to support family literacy and other community literacy programs.
• building a partnership with the Columbia Basin Trust and other regional bodies, on behalf  of the local Community Literacy Advisory Committees.
• raising the public awareness of literacy, basic skills, and life long learning issues across     the Columbia Basin.
• bringing diverse people together, across the Columbia Basin, to move forward on literacy, basics skills, and life long learning issues.
• developing and supporting longer term sustainable financial strategies in support of the   work in local communities.
• building local community recognition of literacy and life long learning services and programs 
• reaching out to the less visible and more isolated people in local communities.

Functions of The Local Community Literacy Advisory Committees

The role of the local Community Literacy Advisory Committees includes:

• identifying, evaluating, and prioritizing the literacy and life long learning needs in local communities.
• developing visions, dreams, and plans.
• taking action on the plans.
• initiating new programs that are responsive to changing needs.
• supporting existing programs.