"We've gotten side-tracked into other things, partly because of the project basis of the funding available to us now. We end up having to dream up little schemes for funding for term-certain projects (some of which I admit have been good ones) but that takes time away from the real issue of teaching people to read and caring about the lives of the people doing the teaching."

"We haven't dealt well with the way the funding for literacy programs has evolved. The government's philosophy for funding programs was not thought out; it has just developed willy-nilly with the very clear notion that someday we will have taught all those people to read and we won't be needed anymore - so why bother to think through what's going to happen in the future? I have to believe that the government didn't do that deliberately, but that's the way it is and now it's time to make some changes."

Those who have had the chance to spend time talking with Kathy will attest to her dynamic and energetic approach to literacy. Always full of innovative ideas (and often way ahead of her peers) Kathy's leadership in the literacy field has been fast-paced and ground-breaking. When I spoke to Kathy, she told me she has taken an educational leave from Medicine Hat College to work on her Ph. D. at the University of Alberta. She is conducting a fascinating study of the "positive impacts" of literacy programming.

"I'm working on an evaluation model that will look at literacy and basic education from the positive impacts (the changes that happen to people when they get involved in literacy education) not just for the learners, but for all the stakeholders - the teachers, the tutors, the administrators and the educational agencies they represent, the community at large and the government that's funding them. I think that we can demonstrate a whole lot of positive impacts for everybody, which should give enormous credibility to the whole effort to teach people to read."

"We should also be able to identify the principles of good practice, based on the positive impacts, which should lead to accountability and management and not losing the funds we've got. I'm thinking about cost effectiveness. If we can identify 50 positive impacts in a program that gets $10,000 a year, then we can compare that with the cost-effectiveness of other educational programs."

"Some educational programs get hundreds of thousands of dollars - can they identify as many positive impacts as we can? I don't think they can. I want to use that premise to get more security and more long-term credibility for the literacy and basic education field."

I am always amazed by Kathy's endless energy but she assured me she never gets tired of her involvement in literacy. "There was a time when I thought I had 'mastered literacy'," Kathy admitted, thinking back a number of years. "I thought I had done all there was to do and I almost left the field. Fortunately, I didn't extricate myself before I realized that I was really just getting going and that there was still so much to do. I feel like a sponge right now; I'm just learning and learning."

"Literacy has been the core of my existence for many years and I don't think that's going to change. There's a song that has a line in it - 'How sad to grow old without a cause'. I feel privileged to have a cause. I see a lot of people who don't and their lives really lack focus. They bumble forward and have a relatively interesting life but they've missed so much."