Bev is a strong team player. I worked with her on the Regional Resource People Project for the LCA for close to 3 years and watched her team approach and warm enthusiasm draw together the people involved in the Project.

When I asked her about her team approach she said, "I have a favourite saying - 'Adults want to know how much you care, before they care how much you know'. I wish I knew who originated that saying because it's the basis of my whole teaching philosophy. How you treat people is really important and that includes co-workers as well as students. It has to start from there. If we don't care, we can't possibly hope for success."

I didn't know anyone when I went to the ALCG meeting. When I found the meeting room at the Edmonton Public School Board's Centre for Education I stood at the door, hesitant to go in. And then a well-dressed woman came up to me and offered me her hand. She said simply, "Hi. My name is KATHY CHANG. We're really glad you could join us." I've never forgotten that.

As an academic upgrading instructor at the Brooks Campus of Medicine Hat College, Kathy became interested in the whole idea of "readability". She explained, "I started to realize as an English teacher that students were dropping out, not because of lack of motivation, but because they couldn't handle the level of the material (which was basically at a Grade 9 level). That's when I discovered that there was such a thing as an adult who couldn't read well. That was in 1979."

Kathy helped to establish and subsequently coordinate the Adult Basic Literacy Education (ABLE) Program in Brooks in the early '80's. After she completed her Masters, she moved to Medicine Hat and convinced the College that they should have a similar program in Medicine Hat. That was in 1983. Three years later she became the College's Assistant Director of Community Education. It was in that role that Kathy attended the ALCG meeting, playing a major part in the founding of the organization that later became known as the Literacy Coordinators of Alberta (LCA). Kathy is perhaps best known, however, for the remarkable work she has done with the Alberta Association for Adult Literacy (AAAL), resurrecting and rescuing it from near non-existence into a vibrant and productive Association of over 500 members.

I served on the Board of the AAAL for 2½ years while Kathy served as President of the Association. I have many memories of working late into the night, writing out and planning goals and objectives, sharing in Kathy's vision of a brighter future for literacy students and literacy workers. Kathy added her own memories. "It was hard work. We had to be so careful and creative with what little money we had. There would barely be enough money in the bank account for us to get together to even have a board meeting. We would sleep three to a room in the least expensive hotel we could find."

"And then when more money became available, it was bang - all of a sudden, and we really didn't know how to deal with it. We had to struggle and learn a whole new and different set of skills. People who enter into literacy today just take so much for granted; they have no idea what it was like then. Sometimes I've thought to myself, 'I wish we could go back to those days when we were just wishing that we had more money, because having more money didn't always serve us well.'"