Executive Summary

In 1999, 15 individuals from Newfoundland and Labrador, including representatives from community-based literacy and family literacy programs, the school system and literacy development agencies, attended the Atlantic Canada Family Literacy Institute in Prince Edward Island. At that session, provincial delegates agreed to continue to collaborate. A provincial conference and two publications are the results of their efforts.

Over 195 people attended the conference "Gathering Voices: Building an Alliance for Family Literacy" held October 26 - 28, 2000, at the Battery Hotel in St. John's. The conference attracted participants from literacy development programs, family resource centres, daycare centres, Health and Community Services, schools and school boards, the Department of Education and parents.

Over the three days, events included a PreConference Workshop "Roots of Empathy", two Keynote addresses (Mary Gordon and Elizabeth Hanson), 12 workshops, the launch of two publications, and exhibits displaying programs and resources.

Mary Gordon has been developing school-based Family Literacy and parenting programs since the early 1980s, and currently administrates Parenting and Family Literacy Programs with the Toronto District School Board. Her passion is helping children learn and succeed in life and one of the ways she does that is through a program she designed called Roots of Empathy. It is a classroom based parenting course - for children. The main goal of the program is to develop empathy in children. The philosophy that guides the program is that, with empathy for themselves and others, children will be more able to develop to their full potential as complete human beings, and less likely to be cruel.

In her keynote address Mary talked about how working with families is the most effective way of raising literacy levels. We have to help our children feel that they can do it and want to do it. That doesn't come from teachers in classrooms, it comes from the loving relationships that exist in the home. Our role is to help those relationships. We need to be advocates for families and we need to help families advocate for themselves. We have the strength and communication processes but do we have the will? It means more work, more meetings, more convincing of more bureaucrats, and the loosening of more pocketbooks.

Elizabeth Hanson is Assistant Director at the Basic Skills Agency, which is the national development agency for literacy and numeracy in England and Wales. She talked about how the Agency carries out its mission to help raise standards of basic skills in England and Wales. They define basic skills narrowly, as those required to participate as a citizen: the ability to read, write and speak in English, and use mathematics at a level necessary to function and progress at work and in society in general.

The Agency works by invitation from bodies that have an interest in developing basic skills programs, including schools, colleges, training providers, local and regional government bodies, and community health and housing organizations. Family Literacy programs have only three aims, which are to improve the literacy of parents, to improve parents' ability to help their children, and to improve children's acquisition of reading and writing skills. The emphasis is on developing literacy, and parenting is supported as a context for the literacy learning.