‘Literacy is about empowerment,’ new minister says
B.C. NDP government granting $500,000 to Sun’s 2017 Raise-a-Reader campaign
Education Minister Rob Fleming says the new NDP government has a different and fresh attitude toward public education than its predecessors did. But when it comes to the importance of literacy, both parties appear to agree.
Just as the B.C. Liberal government did in 2016, the B.C. government is providing $500,000 to support literacy through the 2017 Vancouver Sun Raise-a-Reader campaign.
B.C.’s literacy organization, Decoda Literacy Solutions, will be working with The Sun to distribute the contribution to community-based literacy organizations throughout the province.
“I think literacy for life is critically important,” Fleming said in a telephone interview. “There are far too many people who have been let down in the past and struggled through life with low literacy and numeracy levels who get trapped in poverty. They feel insecure, and are unable to live life to their full potential.”
“Literacy is about empowerment.”
For the B.C. NDP government, the link between literacy and economic development — “literacy’s link with prosperity,” Fleming said — is clear. Teaching literacy has been an effective tool in the fight against poverty, allowing workers trapped in low-skill categories to gain skills and training that can help them to find better jobs.
“It’s also about helping people who are struggling with literacy today get engaged in learning,” Fleming said, adding there are social benefits. “That may be for employment opportunities, or it may be for a grandparent who simply wants to read to their grandchild.
“I’ve certainly heard enough inspiring stories from the literacy community to know how important a difference a relatively small investment in literacy programming can make,” Fleming said, before sharing one such story about a prisoner in a federal correctional institution who recently learned to read, allowing him to share his passion for cooking from prison.
“I remember hearing from a corrections officer and administrator in the prison system how important it was for some offenders in our prison system to be able to learn how to read. I saw the product of one of those literacy classes where a gentleman had written a cookbook,” Fleming said. “He went from not being able to read at all to publishing his own cookbook.”
Since 2004, the province has donated $5 million to the B.C. literacy community through the Raise-a-Reader Campaign, which has raised nearly $9 million over the past 20 years to fund important literacy programs for families and children in B.C.