Welcome to our resource book! It has been a labour of love and conviction to put these materials together and it’s dedicated to all of you and the important literacy work you are doing in your communities.
We imagine you to be just like us -a group of street women, volunteers, community development workers and literacy instructors. We are women who care about each other and believe that every woman deserves a place where she can reflect, learn, heal and create.
Most women living and working the streets don’t have that learning space. The street is a dangerous and dehumanizing place for women. Your identity becomes invisible and unimportant and your soul is eroded.
When we began our literacy project at a drop in for female sex-trade workers in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, many people thought it would not work.
“Women are not ready to learn.”
“Women need to clean up (be alcohol and drug free and not working in the sex-trade”) before they can begin their upgrading.”
“How can you deliver a literacy program in a chaotic drop-in centre?
Instead, we found the opposite. Women are eager and interested in learning. Women on the street long for a place to be creative, write poetry and reflect on their lives. Women at WISH have a lot to say about themselves, their organization and the way society treats its most vulnerable population. We also found that literacy programming needed a re-definition if learning was to be appropriate and accessible to women who are fighting a daily struggle of survival. When we started the WISH Learning Centre, we could not find any learning materials that were directly applicable.