The Rotary Club of Vancouver Quadra Literacy Committee
Vision:
To provide opportunities that lead to literacy for children and their caregivers
Goals:
To provide resources to encourage a love of books and reading
To enhance literacy development and school readiness
We do this by:
1. Building community networks between out club and other groups who work on literacy issues in order to build a cohesive voice for literacy. This network could include teachers, librarians, community service agencies, parents and students.
2. Seeking funds to make our goals and objectives possible
3. Providing parents and caregivers of young children with resources and information needed to enhance and develop literacy skills
4. Evaluating our processes and performance on a regular basis – both formally and informally
5. Celebrating our successes!
Members this year include:
Erlene Woollard, Frances Kolotyluk, Jennifer Wesman, Patricia Porter, Jenipher Wazike, Margaret Joseph.
The committee was awarded $8000 from our fundraiser Bid for Books. This money has been spent on local and international literacy projects.
These projects included:
Frontier College Summer Writing Program
Pacific Immigrant Resource Society
Alphabet Soup Program
Lugari Community Resource Center
Speakers books donated to various programs
Abatavu orphanage
Community links have been created with-
First Nations Education program
Mount Pleasant Neighborhood House
Mosaic
Here is an quote from an e-mail received from Literacy Programs at Collingwood Neighbourhood House:
"Hello Erlene, what a pleasure to hear from you. Absolutely, YES !! The huge donation of books made a significant impact in our community. We were able to give books to every child in our child care programs, infants, toddlers, preschoolers, school age (which is about 400 children). As well we were able to distribute them to the English as a second language classes, all the parent/child drop in programs, the mother goose literacy programs, some of the local kindergarten classes, as well as to identified families in our neighbourhood. It's amazing how the gift of a book puts a smile on a person's face...child or adult - people are always thrilled and glad to receive a book. The donation from the Rotary Club was really wonderful for us and rippled though hundreds and hundreds of families, so thank you."
The committee feels that it has had a very productive 2008/2009 Rotary year. Growth has been achieved and all members have been involved in useful and needed work.
