It's hard to believe 10 years have passed. Some of you can probably remember when we started out with a desk in the hallway at 201 Albert Street. Well, you'd better come down and see where we are now!

        Everyone is welcome to join us on Sunday, February 27 from 12:00 noon until 4:00 pm. We'll have door prizes, a silent auction, coffee, donuts, cake, guest speakers, and lots of old pictures. It will be fun to reminisce. Do you know that we have 331 current and former members; 390 current and former tutors; 167 current and former BEARS; 170 current and former bookstore volunteers, 55 current and former board members?

        The United Way is organizing a giant garage sale for Saturday, March 11th, from 9:00am to 3:00pm at the Centennial Building (Beban Park) Literacy Central VI will be taking a table so we would appreciate it if you could clean out your cupboards and donate us some good, useable garage sale items. We can collect it at our office until sale day.

        Literacy Central VI in partnership with N.D.S.S. , L'Association des francophones de Nanaimo, the Vancouver Island Regional Library and the Nanaimo OnLine Association has applied to Industry Canada for funding to enhance our public access computer site. We currently have 3 computers connected to Shaw@home that are available to the public for 1 hour of supervised computer time per day. Individuals can receive instruction in basic introduction to computers and the internet. With the funding from Industry Canada we could upgrade an additional 7 computers.

        The goal of Industry Canada is to establish affordable public Internet access sites all across Canada to help ensure that all Canadians have affordable access to the economic, social and cultural opportunities that access to the Internet promotes.

        The Altrusa Club of Nanaimo is donating $6,000.00 to the Early Intervention Reading Program in our elementary schools. This will enable the schools to purchase specialized reading books for working with children in early grades who are identified as having difficulty reading.

        The Rotary Club of Nanaimo, Daybreak through Rotary International have contributed over $4,000.00 to our alternate schools to purchase specialized reading material of interest to early teens.

        Our Valerie is going to participate in the The Great Walk, from Gold River to Tahsis (64k), June 3rd. She is looking for sponsors and will donate her proceeds to Literacy Central VI. We will have a sign up sheet at the office

Thank you to the latest group of tutors to receive their certificates for completing 6 months of tutoring: Pat Tripp, Mathew Marshall, Delores Joslin, Giselle Merlet, instructor Christine Norris, John Murphy, Jody Maxim, and Lorna Calderwood.