The Advisory Committee

We formed an advisory committee to the project consisting of the three Prospects staff, Maureen Sanders, Margaret Reine and Susan Devins, as well as co-ordinators from three other literacy programs: Terry Regimbald from STAR Literacy Program in St. Albert, Sandra Dye from A.L.P.H.A. project in Wildwood and Carol Ulmer from Drayton Valley Adult Literacy Society. Ken MacDonald, Chair of the Prospects Board from 1993-1995 was also A member of this committee.

The committee met three times to provide feedback during the course of the project, to serve as a sounding board throughout the project and to evaluate the achievement of the objectives. Committee members also responded to drafts of this report. It was particularly important to obtain the perspectives of co-ordinators in small, rural programs where the realities of running a program can differ substantially from the realities of a large urban program. We wanted to ensure that any findings from our study would be applicable to programs of all kinds across the province.

Collecting Data

We decided to gather, in three ways, the data needed to help us determine the effectiveness of our program. First, we would track where we spent our time over a period of several months. This would demonstrate whether or not we were balanced in our approach to program management

Second, we would do a comparison over time of our year-end Program Participation Summaries compiled for our provincial government funder. Since we had been making conscious efforts in the area of 50/50 Management for more than a year, we felt that looking at statistics for year-end 1992 and 1993 along with the coming 1994 year-end figures might provide a reasonable picture of our progress towards our goal of a more effective program.

Third, we wanted to do some analysis of the Board of Directors