• personal interest in or experience with literacy (e.g. tutoring)
• recognition of the importance of literacy and early intervention
• awareness of literacy needs in the community
• "made sense" (shared goals with literacy program, such as developing better parenting skills; mutually beneficial relationship; good resource for clients; location more comfortable for clients than college; complementary services or programs, such as prenatal classes; belief that family literacy can alleviate social and educational problems)
• access to potential clients (seen as a way for agencies to reach hard-to-reach families; to help the family literacy program to reach families; agency has the staff and resources to recruit participants, where family literacy program doesn't)
• to lend expertise and experience to other programs to make them more appropriate for low-income families

Mapping your community
By now you should have a sense of what your community needs are, which program would possibly address those needs, and what your agency would need to realize that program. You're now ready to identify potential partners in your area.

An exercise that we've found very effective for identifying resources in the community is one that Kathy Day of Pincher Creek adapted from Dr. Ruth Nickse's session at the Roots of Literacy Symposium in Brooks in 1992. It's called "Mapping the Community," and it is an easy, practical method of identifying, locating, and preparing to contact agencies. You can find instructions for the exercise on Worksheet C on page 87.

When you are finished, you'll have a list of three categories of partners: those who regularly interact with families, those who can help meet needs your agency can't address internally, and those who have contact with specific target groups. These categories will be helpful when you make contact with the organization, in terms of why you are contacting them and how you think you can work together.

Possibilities for partnerships
The list in Table 4 was put together from the proceedings of a number of family literacy conferences, and a survey we did in Alberta of family literacy programs. It may give you some ideas for possible partnerships that weren't identified in the previous exercise.