First, an additional staff member arrived in April, 2001 to teach an Office Administration program. Ken referred to Barb Miron’s addition to the Community Learning Centre as “reaching critical mass” in terms of staffing. The two colleagues generated program ideas through ongoing and impromptu brainstorming. Then, in the fall of 2001, an ECE staff person told Ken and Barb that funding was still available for community projects, so they reworked and expanded the original proposal. With the extra funding that they received, they were able to hire three local adult literacy tutors and two family literacy workers. Thus the Fort Resolution Community Literacy Program got underway.

One of the program’s objectives from the outset was to build capacity within the community so that local people would be able to deliver literacy programs. Initially, the adult educators micromanaged the process. However, as the program began to achieve its objective of building community capacity, the approach to planning changed: increasingly, the adult educators began to delegate responsibility. Finally, local literacy workers were able to take full responsibility for programs and made many of the planning decisions by themselves. It was an evolutionary process.

At the beginning though, literacy programming was new to everyone, so during the first eight months, planning meetings were frequent and lengthy, with daily operations often discussed in minute detail. Everyone was, more or less, involved in every decision and every aspect of the program. The adult educators still feel that this was necessary during the steep learning curve at the start of the program.

In 2002, when Ken left the community, Barb became the adult educator, and also the program manager. By this time, the literacy workers had grown in confidence and experience, so Barb was able to delegate more and more. Staff still met together as a group, but less frequently and for shorter periods of time. The meetings became a forum for sharing experiences and ideas rather than for reviewing operational details.