There it is again. Human kindness, decency, treating people with respect and dignity. After a long period of barely being acknowledged by the College Administration, Don Snow came along and treated the people involved in the literacy program with interest and respect. They responded by putting their best into their work. And that rubbed off on the tutors and they in turn treated their students with interest and respect. The tutors were encouraged to feel part of the program and the students were encouraged to feel part of their own learning.

We often talk about "empowerment", that students become empowered when they become more literate. But empowerment also comes from kindness. When we're treated kindly and feel included in the work we are doing, we begin to feel that anything is possible. It is as simple as that but it is also as profound as that.

I asked David if in his literacy work in Red Deer he had felt acknowledged as a literacy coordinator. "I remember the first meeting of the Resource People Project," he said, smiling a little. "It was at St. Stephen's College at the University and it was in the middle of a great snow storm. There were about 10 literacy coordinators there from all over the province and we started talking about the ideas for this Project and how we were going to pull it all off."

"That was a wonderful experience for me - getting together and finding out that the struggles that I was going through in my job and all the things that I felt I needed were shared with those other people. There was a real feeling of solidarity there and a feeling of being empowered, taking on the responsibility for helping ourselves to help the tutors to help the students."

I had also been at that meeting and remembered the energy of the group and the wonderful ideas that came out of those 2 days together. It was my job at that time to take those ideas and begin to develop a plan for establishing a network of literacy resource people throughout the province. I remember too the excitement we all felt about the financial support the federal and provincial governments were committing to the Project.

"The money was great," David agreed, "but there was another currency that we were exchanging at that meeting - the currency of concrete caring for each other. The money was important but it was the human contact and sharing of ideas that was really important."

David asked if it would be alright to take a break to make a pot of tea. As he filled the kettle with water I asked him if he had ever minded being one of the very few men working in literacy at that time. He looked a little taken aback then said, "To tell you the truth, I never really thought much about it. I suppose I felt more reserved at times. It's quite natural for me to put my hand on someone's arm or shoulder and I felt conscious sometimes about not doing that."

"I did think sometimes that it was helpful being a man when it came to interviewing the guys that had worked in the oil patch or who were truck drivers. I loved listening to their stories. I felt I had a real understanding (at least in part) of what their lives and their rough and tumble world of work had been like. But that's really no different than you identifying more easily with a mother with young children."

When we were both seated again at the table in David's sun- streaked dining room I asked him if there were things about working in literacy that had been difficult for him. "The time when I felt 'God, this is gravely serious business' was when it was tutor training time. What I bumped into then was asking myself - 'How can I tell people in three evenings of 2 hours each what they should do (and people definitely came looking for guidance) to teach adult students how to read and write?' I had 6 hours to teach them and that just stopped me dead in my tracks."