Learner Stories On Monday, January 14th we launched three learner stories on the National Adult Literacy Database (www.NALD.ca) Omer Cormier, John Kupusa and Mary Lappalainen launched their stories with audio. You can find them by going to the NALD site or type: www.nald.ca/story/story.htm

Literacy Central VI has finally developed a basic volunteer policy. We are still working on more specific policy for the different areas such as the book store, the BEARS program, etc. Thank you to the committee members Val Little and Lorna Zaback. We based our policy on Volunteer Vancouver's book "By Definition: Policies for Volunteer Programs. This was an excellent guide to work from.

Our public access Internet site is very busy. There seems to be a regular group of users who come in daily to check their email, etc. We had a lot of tourists in during the summer months. It was interesting to see the variety of countries and languages. Brian has been busy giving "basic computer" lessons. He has also designed a program for tracking the usage. Individuals have to log in with a password to use the site. This provides us with some statistics such as gender, age, usage, etc. His basic computer instruction book is still selling well.

We have a wonderful success story that has come out of the CAP site. An individual (age 59) was coming in and accessing the Internet, with help from a supervisor. He then told the supervisor that he couldn't read very well. Our supervisor connected him up with our tutor coordinator and he has never looked back. He is now enrolled in classes at Malaspina College and doing extremely well. His motto is "it is never too late". It was a major eye opener for him to discover that there were others who had difficulty reading and that he wasn't alone.

Our book store has been very busy. There is a never ending supply of books being donated. For those of you who haven't seen our store we are located on the main street in downtown Nanaimo. There are three other used book stores in the same block and two of them just doubled in size. This is becoming a "used book" destination.

One of our bookstore volunteers, Bea Holmes, has taken it on herself to list some of the more interesting books on the Internet. Our books are listed on the Advanced Book Exchange site. That's www.ABE.com. Sales have been brisk with books being shipped all over the world. We have also shipped donated books to a number of third world destinations. Usually the request comes from someone in Nanaimo who knows someone working overseas. We are happy to donate books that can help to advance literacy levels anywhere we can.

Brian is going to do it again. We have just sent off his registration. He says he is going to buy new shoes and get them broken in before June.