Team Literacy to convene in February for Literacy Action Day 99

Each February since 1993 representatives of Canada’s literacy community have converged on Ottawa for Literacy Action Day (LAD).

LAD 99 will happen on Thursday, February 18th. The six Nationals are involved again: ABC CANADA, la Fédération canadienne pour l’alphabétisation en français, Frontier College, Laubach Literacy of Canada, the Movement for Canadian Literacy and the National Adult Literacy Database.

During LAD, a combined total of about 50 literacy practitioners and adult learners descend on Parliament Hill to talk to Members of Parliament about Canada’s literacy problems and solutions.

This year we will also meet with public officials in four areas of federal program and policy activity: health, employment, justice/corrections and aboriginal peoples.

As work by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and other organizations has shown, literacy is clearly a major factor in public policy. Literacy practitioners and adult learners are in an excellent position to explain to policy-makers how literacy interacts with health care, poverty, employment, economic development, crime prevention, social justice, education, training, aboriginal rights and other contemporary concerns.

If you want to contribute to LAD 99, it would be very useful to receive any examples you have of which federal programs are working, or not working, in your community from a literacy point of view. Email cmcnaughton@literacy.ca, or you can call or fax Movement for Canadian Literacy (Tel: 613 563 2464, Fax: 613 563 2504) right up to February 18th!

Don’t forget to let your MP know that you would appreciate their taking time to meet with literacy representatives during Literacy Action Day 99.