The Project Participants

The community-based volunteer adult literacy programs of Alberta have much in common and, at the same time, are as varied as they are numerous. Our goals and methodologies are similar no matter what our differences. Yet, being community-based, each program reflects its community's individuality and uniqueness. We therefore wanted the programs involved in this project to reflect not only our commonalities but also our differences as much as possible. The programs that participated were:

• Prospects Literacy Association in Edmonton:

  Prospects coordinator Maureen Sanders agreed to work with up to 100 tutoring pairs for this project. Prospects was the largest program in the Evaluation Project, and the only urban one.

• The Write Soon Literacy Project in Whitecourt:

  Karen Manweiler was the Write Soon coordinator at the time and agreed to work with up to 65 pairs. This project covers a large geographical area in northern Alberta, incorporating several communities, and requiring a lot of traveling by the coordinator.

• Parkland Adult Literacy Project in Stony Plain:

  Located in a rural area not far from Edmonton, the project in Stony Plain is medium-sized. Candice Jackson, who coordinated the program at the time, planned to work with up to 30 pairs.

• Project Read in Claresholm:

  Marnie Schaetti's program was the smallest one involved, bringing 15 pairs to the project. Project Read, located 100 kilometres south of Calgary, serves several rural communities, the largest of which has a population of about 3,000.