Table 4: Potential Community Partners

  • literacy, adult basic education, and English as a Second Language programs and organizations
  • schools (teachers, school councils, school boards and trustees, kindergarten and early childhood, parent-teacher groups, colleges and universities, alternate programs)
  • parent groups
  • infant and youth services (infant daycare, group daycares, pre-schools, special needs children's services, youth recreation, guidance and counselling programs, children's clubs such as Girl Guides and Boy Scouts)
  • libraries, library personnel, and community library advisory boards
  • reading councils
  • media (newspapers, community television, book publishers)
  • business and industry
  • book stores
  • service clubs
  • health services (hospitals, community clinics, nurses, physicians, mental health and rehabilitation services
  • community organizations (Native, Métis, seniors, multicultural, abilities centres, and transition houses)
  • housing authorities
  • Social Services (teen and young parent programs), Employment, Immigration (most federal and provincial government agencies)
  • correctional centres
  • charitable foundations
  • churches and ministerial groups
  • speech therapists
  • food banks
  • counselling (individual and family counselling, parent and family support services)

Preparing an information package
Before you contact your potential partners, make sure you're prepared to present information and answer questions. We recommend assembling an information package to mail out to potential partners after you have made the initial contact.

There are three main types of information to include:

  • a brief, clear explanation of family literacy and its benefits
  • the need for the program
  • an indication of why a partnership is essential

For the explanation of family literacy, see Chapter II of this manual for definitions and a rationale. If your organization has already identified a family literacy program that it thinks is a viable option, include a description of it and its intended outcomes.

The need for the program can be based on the information leading up to your agency's decision to implement a family literacy program. Has your organization conducted any needs assessments in your community or area to justify literacy programming in general? If so, use this information to demonstrate the need for the program. If you haven't, you can contact the Alberta Association for Adult Literacy (AAAL) in Calgary for information from Statistics Canada on literacy levels. The AAAL has broken down the national survey into statistics for federal ridings.


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