One of the people I spent the day with at the hot dog tent was Charles Bostock. We talked for hours about our children and families and hobbies in between golf teams stopping for a drink and something to eat. It wasn't until much later in the day that I discovered Charles was attending the Tournament as a guest speaker. As a student he had been asked on behalf of the Learning Centre to thank Peter Gzowski and to accept the cheque for the money raised. The over 150 people who had donated their time and money to the PGI listened to Charles' heartfelt words, gaining an even greater understanding of the need for people to have access to opportunities to learn to read.

As a volunteer I also had the opportunity to experience first- hand the dedication and organization that goes on behind the scenes of such a successful event. Hours and hours of hard work and constant attention to detail. For the second year Sally Hlavay and her extraordinary committee members are to be commended for the contribution they themselves have made to adult literacy programming in Alberta.

"Awareness does not necessarily lead to action. That's the common (but incorrect) assumption that people make when they're calling for more awareness." Sitting with him in his office in the United Way Building in Calgary, I was listening to JIM BELL discuss his role as the Director of the Calgary Adult Literacy Awareness Project. He continued. "I look at myself and see that I'm very aware of environmental issues. I read a lot about it and I belong to several environmental organizations. But I probably do about 20% of what I know I should and would like to be doing. I'm aware but I consciously tell myself that I don't have the time or the energy to do more. It's not as high a priority as other things."

"Many people approach literacy the same way. They think about it but it's not a high enough priority for them to act on it. Public awareness is far ahead of action. It's a catch word like 'empowerment' or 'whole language'. We haven't tried awareness enough to really know how it works."

I argued with Jim that perhaps awareness is simply the first step to action. I asked him if 5 years ago he cared or knew as much about environmental issues as he does now. "No, perhaps not," Jim said thinking carefully, "although I'm not much closer to action than I was before. I do, however, feel really gratefull to the people who are acting, who are out there trying to make things better. Maybe that's an important role that awareness can play."

"I did a study recently on rural and urban literacy programs and found that the main concern of people working in rural areas is confidentiality. Students don't want to be identified or assigned to tutors in their communities. In a town of 400 people someone is going to notice when Harry's truck is parked in front of someone else's house. But if people had a better understanding of literacy they would be proud of Harry's truck being parked there and they'd say 'Way to go Harry!'. It would be great if we could get more people thinking that way."

The Calgary Adult Literacy Awareness Project is a 2-year project funded by the federal and provincial governments. For the past year and a half Jim has been working to increase awareness of the problems of illiteracy (particularly among social agencies and businesses) and to increase communication among literacy providers and social agencies. He has also established a telephone hotline service to provide information to low literate adults and help them with referrals.