I loved the Pysanka at Vegreville Alberta!Hi folks,
We got back from our 10,303 kms drive out west and super holiday last Wednesday. We had a wonderful time seeing this fantastic country, taking part in the Centre for Family Literacy's "Cultivating Connections" conference in Edmonton and visiting with friends and family. Now I look forward to the fall plans for the Building Family Literacy and Essential Skills OLES project.
I mentioned in my last blog that by the second week in June I'd posted the call for proposals to provide UPP in an LBS program on our website, that I'd sent it out to Ontario literacy networks to forward to their region's LBS programs and had posted it in the CLO e-bulletin which goes to all community based literacy programs.
The proposals were due July 16. I did not receive one proposal nor did I have any inquiries. At the conference Lorri mentioned that she had forwarded the call to a program in her region that she thought might be interested but I didn't hear from them. What do you think we should do? Our intention was to start the UPP programs in October.
I'm thinking that there may be a few issues:
- The children's program or childcare is not a program that LBS programs normally sustain. For most LBS programs this probably seems like a difficult aspect of this project to take on, especially if they have not made partnerships with childcare programs in the community before this.
- Most Ontario LBS programs focus on essential skills for the workplace and do not see family literacy programming as a fit for their participants.
- Ontario Works recipients do not need to attend school or to look for work until their children have entered the school system and so, are not likely to join an upgrading program so participant recruitment might be seen as a possible difficulty.
I met with Isobel and Deb Wood, facilitators of the UPP program at ALSO and KL&S respectively, to talk about the UPP program, how it worked for them and ideas for the future.
I received the final PDQs and questionniares from ALSO and KL&S too. I'll connect with Noriyeh soon to talk with her about the results and the best ways to move forward. Noriyeh was away for June and July.
We (Dave and I) took hundreds of photos! I might add a few to the blog now and again.
For more info about the Pysanka:
Deb
Hi Deb, sorry to hear you are having difficulty finding another site. Per my email to you, I just don't know the Ontario context well enough to make any actual suggestions about organizations to approach. At this point though, I think word of mouth and personal contact is your best strategy. Talk to any programs you know and ask them for suggestions, and then phone people to gauge their interest and follow up with written information. When is your deadline for deciding on a new location?
ReplyDeleteAll the best with this -I know how hard it is as we had a similar problem finding other sites for our learning Together program.
Maureen
p.s. gotta love that Pysanka; and glad to hear you had such a great trip out west!
ReplyDelete