Acknowledgments

One of the ways that Movement for Canadian Literacy (MCL) fulfills its mandate is by bringing together literacy and non-literacy organizations to build consensus, capacity and commitment on shared concerns topic. This project, Linkages: Connecting Literacy and English as a Second Language, reflects MCL’s desire to bring together people from the literacy, ESL and settlement fields to talk about the challenges Canadians with both literacy and language issues face.

This paper serves as a starting point for discussion. It will be used as background material for a forum connecting people from all three fields. We hope this exchange will deep our shared understanding of the issues and suggest directions for future collaboration.

We would like to thank our researcher and consultant, Sue Folinsbee for her commitment to the creation of this paper and her input into the development of the forum. Sue’s work was guided by our working group: Sarah Buhkari, Phil Davison, Sandy Middleton, Robin Millar, Maria Moriarty, Cate Sills, Caroline Vaughan, Nadine Valk and Shailja Verma. Thanks and appreciation to Mary Ellen Belfiore who conducted many of the key informant interviews.

While Sue’s work was guided by the working group, this report couldn’t have been written without the willingness of people working in the literacy, ESL and settlement fields to be interviewed by Sue. The key informants (See Appendix 1) also suggested resources and other people to be interviewed. Thank you all for your contribution to this paper.

Movement for Canadian Literacy
November 2007