The federal government recently announced a major contribution to Canada’s Frontier College.

The contribution includes:

• $12 million to the Frontier College Learning Foundation (an endowment fund)
• $3 million to enable Frontier College to organize teams of volunteer literacy tutors at every university in Canada.

This special contribution is being made in honour of Frontier College’s 100 years of service to Canada and recognizes a number of unique characteristics about Frontier College:

• Canada-wide programs since 1899
• active in both official languages
• focus on youth and youth leadership development
• focus on knowledge, learning and literacy
• one of Canada’s original voluntary organizations
• 100 years of sustained service

This contribution is being made by the government of Canada through the Human Resources Development Department. The funds are not being provided from the budget of the National Literacy Secretariat.

Since 1899, Frontier College teachers and literacy volunteers have worked in partnership with communities across Canada in support of our common commitment to literacy and education for all. This new support will enable Frontier to strengthen our national presence and increase our permanent network of literacy volunteers through our university chapters.

If you have any comments or questions about this announcement, please call me directly at 1-800-555-6523, ext. 306.

For more information about Frontier College, please see our Website — www.frontiercollege.ca

John Daniel O’Leary
President, Frontier College

The Alberta Association for Adult Literacy Celebrates 20th Anniversary and Looks Ahead
by Dennis Fendall*

The Alberta Association for Adult Literacy (AAAL) is very proud to have just completed 20 years of excellent service in the province by supporting the efforts of individual literacy programs and educating many different groups about the literacy needs of Albertans.

As a final event to mark our anniversary, the Board and staff of AAAL participated in a retreat to assist in planning for the future of the association. The theme of the retreat was VISION 2020 - in other words - where have we been, where are we now and where are we going?

The first session of the retreat dealt with some of the history of the first 20 years of AAAL and involved discussion about the dedicated original «pioneers» of literacy who developed a vision for literacy in the province and forged ahead valiantly to actualize their vision.

The current Board and staff realize that they are responsible for ensuring that the efforts of these early literacy workers is recognized and continued. The next session dealt with what AAAL is doing well and where it could be strengthened. Then the participants were involved in discussions and exercises to determine what people believed the association would be like in twenty years from now. There was a strong emphasis on awareness and caring.

Finally the group worked on belief statements about literacy and action goals for the next 6 months. The original intent was to agree on 3 action goals but agreement was reached to work on 9 action goals over the next 6 months. In addition our staff of 7 members - 3 full-time and 4 part-time have agreed to work on 3 goals each over the next 6 months.

All agreed that this was an exciting and challenging time to be involved in literacy and that many different groups throughout the world appear to be recognizing the importance of literacy in eradicating poverty and hunger.

* Dennis Fendall is the first Executive Director of AAAL. Dennis has an extensive background in literacy and numeracy and served most of his professional career with Calgary Catholic Schools as a teacher, principal, and central office administrator. During his years with Calgary Catholic, Dennis was seconded to The Calgary Learning Centre, where he was Executive Director for two years. Most recently, Dennis has worked on a number of projects as a private educational consultant.